Dr. Peter Collings will lead our journal club discussion this week of an article that touches on the interests of several members of our group:
Weaver, L. J., & Hadley, C. (2009). Moving beyond hunger and nutrition: A systematic review of the evidence linking food insecurity and mental health in developing countries. Ecology of Food and Nutrition, 48(4), 263-284.
We will meet at the new time, 12:50 p.m., and the new place, Grinter 376 (Latin American Studies Conference Room). See you there.
The Journal of the National Cancer Institute just published a new correspondence by Connie Mulligan and me about race, genes, and cancer. Our letter is one of five written in response to a high-profile article published in JNCI last summer about racial differences in early death from sex-specific cancers—breast, ovarian, and prostate.
When the report appeared, nearly every major media outlet ran a story claiming that researchers had uncovered new evidence of a genetic basis to racial inequalities in health. See William Saletan’s article in Slate or Paul Taylor’s article in The Globe and Mail for two particularly bold examples.
In our letter, Connie Mulligan and I identify five reasons why the researchers’ speculation about genetic factors—not to mention the media’s portrayal—is unfounded. The most basic problem is that the study did not include any genetic data. They also did not account for the wide range of social and environmental factors that other studies have identified as key to racial inequalities in cancer. We emphasize the need to understand how institutional and interpersonal racism shape human biology, including the risk of early death from certain types of cancer.
If you’re interested in these issues, you’ll want to read the other letters by Michael Montoya and Erin Kent; Katrina Trivers, Lynne Messer, and Jay Kaufman; James Dignam; and Philip Rosenberg and colleagues. Also see the response from two of the original authors, Joseph Unger and Kathy Albain.
View our letter here.
Next Tuesday I’ll be at Emory to give a talk as part of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Center Spring lecture series. The title of the talk is “Meaning and Measurement of Race in Health Research: Lessons from Hypertension in the African Diaspora.”
I’m especially happy to be giving this talk in Atlanta the day after Martin Luther King Day. In a speech to the Second National Convention of the Medical Committee for Human Rights on March 25, 1966, Dr. King declared, “Of all forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane.” I’ll open my talk on Tuesday with the slide you see at left to highlight Dr. King’s remark. It helps us to remember, I think, just how high the stakes are in scientific debate about the meaning and measurement of race in health research.
Here’s the abstract of my talk:
Current debate over racial inequalities in health has reignited controversy over the relations between race, biology, and culture. Some researchers maintain that racial categories are useful proxies for genetic differences in susceptibility to disease. Others see race as a cultural construct and argue for the primacy of social determinants of health. Yet few studies include the kinds of data necessary to pit genetic and sociocultural explanations head-to-head. Here I draw on genetic and sociocultural data from fieldwork in Puerto Rico and the southern United States to evaluate competing explanations for excess hypertension in the African Diaspora. The key finding is that the cultural ascription of racial identity, but not genetic ancestry, is associated with blood pressure. This finding underscores the need to examine how race and racism become embodied in human biology.
If you happen to be in Atlanta on Tuesday, come to the Psychology Building (PAIS) at Emory, Room 290, at 4:00 p.m.
Douglas Monroe will lead our journal club discussion this week with an article closely related to our current work in Tallahassee:
Shariff-Marco, S., Gee, G. C., Breen, N., Willis, G., Reeve, B. B., Grant, D. et al. (2009). A mixed-methods approach to developing a self-reported racial/ethnic discrimination measure for use in multiethnic health surveys. Ethnicity & Disease, 19(4), 447-453.
Please note that, based on popular demand, our meeting time has shifted to 12:50 – 1:40 p.m. While we look for a permanent meeting place during that time slot, we will meet this week in 1208 Turlington (Conference Room).
This month WFSU-TV is rebroadcasting the award-winning PBS documentary,Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?. WFSU has partnered with the Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee (HEAT) to organize a series of community events around this documentary series.
Tomorrow, January 8, HEAT will kickoff the rebroadcast of Unnatural Causes with a town forum on racial and socioeconomic inequalities in health. The forum will take place at 6:00 p.m. at the studios of WFSU and will feature a panel of researchers, policymakers, and community activists. We will also view excerpts from the documentary series and open the floor to questions and answers from the audience. The agenda for the kickoff event is below.
HEAT has also organized a series of community gatherings to view the documentary series when it airs over the remaining four Sundays in January. For more information about where community gatherings will take place, see the event flyer or visit the HEAT website. We also encourage you to organize a viewing of your own and let us know, so we can spread the word.
Please join us tomorrow, Friday, January 8, at WFSU-TV for the Unnatural Causes Kickoff Event and become part of the conversation.
Nikki D’Errico will kick off journal club for the New Year with an article closely related to her own research:
Trenholm, J. E., Olsson, P., & Ahlberg, B. M. (2010). Battles on women’s bodies: War, rape and traumatisation in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Global Public Health, in press.
This week only, we will meet in Turlington 1208. Starting next week, we will return to the African Studies Conference Room, 471 Grinter.
This week in journal club Aida Miro will be presenting a recent paper by some of my favorite authors you’ve probably never heard of: Amy Non, Connie Mulligan, and me.
Gravlee, C. C., Non, A. L., & Mulligan, C. J. (2009). Genetic ancestry, social classification, and racial inequalities in blood pressure in southeastern Puerto Rico. PLoS ONE, 4(9), e6821.
Come join us on Friday, 10:40-11:30 a.m., to find out whether the criticism will be as ruthless as usual with two of the three authors sitting in the room. We’ll be in 471 Grinter Hall (African Studies Conference Room).
The Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee (HEAT) will hold its next monthly meeting today, November 17. The meeting will take place 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. in Conference Room A at Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare. Key items on the agenda include:
- Planning for community events around the re-broadcast of Unnatural Causes in January
- An update on the development of the HEAT Food Policy Council
- Discussion of a funding opportunity from NIH for community-based participatory research on childhood obesity prevention
The next monthly meeting is tentatively scheduled for December 15.
You may know that the University of Florida recently established a Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) at UF with support from a CTSA award from NIH.
So what is translational research, and what does it have to do with anthropology? Come to journal club this week and find out. Tamar Carter will lead our discussion of the following article:
McGarvey, S. T. (2009). Interdisciplinary translational research in anthropology, nutrition, and public health. Annual Review of Anthropology, 38, 233-249.
We will meet on Friday, 10:40 – 11:30 a.m., in 471 Grinter Hall (African Studies Conference Room).
This week in journal club Jai Hale-Gallardo will lead our discussion of a recent article by Jeff Snodgrass and colleagues in American Anthropologist:
Snodgrass, J. G., Lacy, M. G., Sharma, S. K., Jhala, Y. S., Advani, M., Bhargava, N. K. et al. (2008). Witch hunts, herbal healing, and discourses of indigenous ecodevelopment in North India: Theory and method in the anthropology of environmentality. American Anthropologist, 110(3), 299-312.
We will meet in Grinter 471 (African Studies Conference Room), 10:40 – 11:30 a.m., with a conversation with the author to follow at 1:00 p.m.
