One of the reasons for child health research

Updated: 25-May-05

Please describe your activities as a practicing medical anthropologist.

Most of my time is spent in research-related activities, including cultivating collaborations at local hospitals and other healthcare sites as well as with fellow researchers, collecting and analyzing data for my ongoing projects, and writing up findings. Much of what I publish these days is collaborative, which means that the process is a bit more complicated than it was when I was practicing the more traditional version of anthropology. Another difference is that most of the journals I now target are indexed in Medline or known to the biomedical community, because I want to make sure that I reach that audience.  However, I have always considered it essential to devote time to issues that are of pressing concern to the academic anthropology community, so I do publish works specifically for my professional peers.  I also maintain an active service profile within the Society for Medical Anthropology and related organizations, and I am a dedicated educator.

How do these activities reflect your anthropological training?

My recent affiliation with SDSU brought me back into academia after many years in the ‘real world’. The academic track squares completely with my pre-PhD training. Having taken my PhD at UCSD, the applied work does not. However, as a socio-cultural anthropologist, I was trained to think and reason critically, and these skills as well as skills in grant-writing, project management, and data collection and analysis are as essential in planning and conducting applied research projects in the health care arena as they are to planning and conducting other forms of research in other realms. Notwithstanding, I would caution the socio-cultural anthropologist considering applied health services work that qualitative approaches are not well-understood in the ‘outside world’. As a result, assumptions by health services audiences about our skills generally have to do with number crunching. Part of my job, then, is to educate the health services community as to the value of qualitative approaches, and the main way that I choose to do this is by incorporating these approaches into research that will have valuable real-life applications in relation to health services delivery and related health outcomes.

What do you see as medical anthropology's major contribution to the understanding the processes of health and disease?

For those who work in the health services, the take-home message of medical anthropology has to be that health and disease (illness, sickness) are complex social, political, and cultural as well as biological processes. Beyond this, health services workers also can learn how to self-reflexively examine their professional beliefs and practices as cultural phenomenon.  For those who do not work in health care but whose lives bring them in contact with that world, medical anthropology can provide insight into the culturally constructed nature of biomedical diagnostic categories and health care processes, helping them to become more critical and more activated as consumers of care.

Where is medical anthropology going?

There has for a long time been a tension between 'applied' and 'theoretical' medical anthropology. Many anthropologists who study health actually prefer not to call themselves 'medical anthropologists,' as that suggests an applied dimension or one of deference to biomedicine that they prefer to steer clear of. At the same time, the socio-cultural anthropological approach does seem to be meeting with warmer receptions in organizations and institutions previously dominated by biomedicine. If we do not take advantage of this window of opportunity, others will, and we run the risk of losing control of the tools of our discipline, the direction of inquiry, and the power gained from being recognized for important contributions.

What recommendations do you have for individuals contemplating a career in medical anthropology?

This is a tough question, because there are so many ways that one can 'do' medical anthropology. The skills that one needs in one job may be quite different to the skills needed in another. There is the academic route or the applied route, the cultural route or the physical route, quantitative or qualitative... The best advice that I can offer is: (1) Refuse to limit yourself too early in your career through over-specialization or over-investment in any one paradigm, and (2) Learn to collaborate!