Clarence C. Gravlee

The Bones and Behavior Working Group has just launched a new website to disseminate measurement protocols commonly used in biological anthropology. The centerpiece of the group’s work is the integrative measurement protocol (PDF), which assembles a core set of skeletal and non-skeletal measurements used in human biology, primatology, and evolutionary morphology. The site promises to include protocols for other methods, including collection of dried blood spots.

The integrative measurement protocol includes non-skeletal measures that many medical anthropologists collect — height, weight, and skinfolds, for example. These and related anthropometric methods are also covered in standard references like the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) Anthropometry Procedures Manual.

What sets the Bones and Behavior Protocol apart is its focus on core measures that span the study of humans and non-human primates. The working group organizers, Josh Snodgrass (U Oregon) and Susan Anton (NYU), note that researchers in different branches of biological anthropology — human biology, primatology, paleoanthropology — address a similar set of questions but work in relative isolation. With the integrative measurement protocol, they hope to encourage researchers to standardize procedures for a core set of measurements that would facilitate greater theoretical integration across subspecialties of biological anthropology.

The Bones and Behavior Working Group is also interested in expanding beyond the integrative measurement protocol. They envision the new website as a clearinghouse for data collection protocols in biological anthropology and encourage contributions from other colleagues. Let’s hope it takes off.

This week we wrap up journal club for the semester with an article that’s sure to keep you thinking all summer long:

Pescosolido, B. A., Perry, B. L., Long, J. S., Martin, J. K., Nurnberger Jr., J., & Hesselbrock, V. (2008). Under the influence of genetics: How transdisciplinarity leads us to rethink social pathways to illness. American Journal of Sociology, 114(S1), S171-S201.

This article tries to advance our thinking about the complex interplay between genetic and social influences on health. We are fortunate to have geneticist Amy Non lead our discussion on Friday, 11:45 a.m. – 12:35 p.m., in the Department Conference Room (1208 Turlington Hall).

The Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee (HEAT) will meet today, April 21, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m., in Conference Room A at Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare. Key agenda items include:

• Discussing our collaboration with the Leon County Health Department on a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant to address childhood obesity
• Identifying priority areas for HEAT representation at the W.K. Kellogg Scholars’ Annual Networking Meeting on Capitol Hill
• Checking in on the progress of our ongoing research on stress, racism, and health among African Americans in Tallahassee

For more about HEAT, check out our website.

This week we discuss a recent article on water insecurity and emotional distress by anthropologists (and UF alums) Amber Wutich and Kathleen Ragsdale:

Wutich, A., & Ragsdale, K. (2008). Water insecurity and emotional distress: Coping with supply, access, and seasonal variability of water in a Bolivian squatter settlement. Social Science & Medicine, 67(12), 2116-2125.

This article connects the dots between several articles we discussed earlier in the semester, including the piece on food insecurity and mental health by Hadley et al. and the Crate paper on global climate change. For another perspective on the article, see the story in ASU’s news source.

As a special treat, tomorrow we’ll have a chance to follow up our discussion directly with one of the authors: Amber Wutich will join us by phone (or Skype) towards the end of the session, so have your questions and comments ready!

The end-of-the-semester crunch is on, and we’ve tweaked the journal club schedule with a few last-minute changes. The first change is a new article from the American Journal of Public Health, presented by Alan Schultz:

Briggs, C. L., & Mantini-Briggs, C. (2009). Confronting health disparities: Latin American social medicine in Venezuela. American Journal of Public Health, 99(3), 549.

This article picks up on several themes we’ve discussed before, including the role of anthropology in public health. We’ll meet, as usual, in the Department Conference Room (1208 Turlington) on Friday, 11:45 a.m. – 12:35 p.m.

Although some of us will be at the HBA/AAPA meetings in Chicago this week, journal club will go on as usual. Brian Tyler will moderate the discussion of a recent article from Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry:

Kohrt, B. A., & Harper, I. (2008). Navigating diagnoses: Understanding mind–body relations, mental health, and stigma in Nepal. Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry, 32(4), 462-491.

If you’re not in Chicago, join the discussion on Friday, 11:45 a.m. – 12:35 p.m. in the Department Conference Room (1208 Turlington).

This week the Human Biology Association (HBA) and American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA) hold their annual meetings together in Chicago. Both the AAPA program and the HBA program are available online (PDFs).

Our department will be well represented with a diverse set of papers. Here’s a sampling of what UF anthropologists will be presenting:

Daegling DJ and McGraw WL. Lever mechanics in the jaws of sympatric West African colobines: skull proportions do not invariably sort taxa by a criterion of dietary consistency.

Gravlee CC. Cultural meaning, social structure, and health in evolutionary perspective.

Hotzman JL and Daegling DJ. Palatal strain during catilever bending: a case study of Macaca fasicularis.

Kitchen A, Qui F, Miyamoto MM, and Mulligan CJ. A population genomic analysis of the peopling of the New World.

McGraw WS and Daegling DJ. Associations of gait, support use and limb morphology in West African colobines: the effects of bounding on locomotor biomechanics.

Miro AT, Kitchen A, Toups M, and Reed D. Coalescent simulations of human louse (Pediculus humanus) evolution reveal contact between archaic Homo species and modern humans.

Mulligan CJ, Non AL, and Gravlee CC. Culture matters: genes, environment, and complex disease.

Non AL. Mitochondrial DNA diversity of Yemenite and Ethiopian Jewish populations.

Rapoff AJ, McGraw WS, and Daegling DJ. Isostress analysis of maxillary canines in cercopithecoid monkeys.

Skorpinski KE and Falsetti AB. Variation and secular trends in linear measurements of the mandible.

Waxenbaum EB and Falsetti AB. Developmental and ecogeographic limb variation among the subadults of three Native American populations.

Patil CL and Young AG. Aversions and cravings, and symptoms of pregnancy experienced by women living in north-central Tanzania. (HBA)

Zukowski LA and Falsetti AB. Trends in lumbar vertebral body and lamina osteophytes.

After a hiatus for spring break and the SfAA meetings, journal club is back with moderator Dr. Peter Collings. The reading he has selected this week focuses on a timely issue: climate change.

Crate, S. A. (2008). Gone the bull of winter? Grappling with the cultural implications of and anthropology’s role(s) in global climate change. Current Anthropology, 49(4), 569-595.

This article may not exactly strike you as medical anthropology, but we take a broad view of things around here—climate change certainly has profound implications for health. Indeed, as if on cue, next week UF will participate in an international videoconference on “Climate Change and Child Health.” Reservations are requested for the videoconference, which will take place 8:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. in the Communicore Building, Health Science Center, Room C-14. See the flyer and agenda for details.

This week the Society for Applied Anthropology is holding its annual meeting in Santa Fe, NM. Amber Wutich and I are offering a one-day workshop on Text Analysis: Systematic Methods for Analyzing Qualitative Data. Here you can view a short overview video and download data we’ll be using in the workshop.

• Overview video
• Workshop data sets

Last week I posted a link to new interactive maps of obesity in the United States, produced by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This week we continue the theme with the CDC’s new Social Determinants of Health Maps.

The Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention explains the rationale for the maps in terms laid out by the CDC’s Social Determinants of Health Working Group:

Social determinants of health are factors in the social environment that contribute to or detract from the health of individuals and communities. These factors include, but are not limited to the following:

• Socioeconomic status
• Transportation
• Housing
• Access to services
• Discrimination by social grouping (e.g., race, gender, or class)
• Social or environmental stressors

The 15 maps on the CDC website correspond imperfectly to this list of social influences on health. The first set of “socioenvironmental” factors includes maps of county-level data for poverty, unemployment, white collar workers, high school education, college education, and urban-rural classification. The next set of “sociodemographic” factors includes percent of population ages 65 or older and the standard bureaucratic set of racial and ethnic categories. The last set on health care focuses on health insurance and the prevalence of neurologists and physicians who specialize in cardiovascular disease.

As the CDC recognizes, this set of factors only scratches the surface of social influences on population health. But it’s useful to have access to maps that illustrate the striking spatial organization of basic factors such as poverty, race, and health care at a national scale. The maps also help to make clear that health inequalities are about much more than health care: Anyone who saw these maps next to similar maps of cardiovascular disease or any other major cause of death would quickly see that the distribution of poverty matters more for population health than does the distribution of cardiologists.