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.
This week Dr. Alyson Young will lead our discussion of a recent paper by a team of anthropologists from the UK:
Hampshire, K. R., Panter-Brick, C., Kilpatrick, K., & Casiday, R. E. (2009). Saving lives, preserving livelihoods: Understanding risk, decision-making and child health in a food crisis. Social Science & Medicine, 68(4), 758-765.
We will meet on Friday at 10:40 a.m. in 471 Grinter Hall (African Studies Conference Room).
Journal club returns this week after a one-week hiatus. Dawit Woldu will lead our discussion of a recent paper from AJHB:
Zhou, H., Watanabe, C., & Ohtsuka, R. (2007). Impacts of dietary intake and helminth infection on diversity in growth among schoolchildren in rural south China: A four-year longitudinal study. American Journal of Human Biology, 19(1), 96-106.
We will meet Friday, 10:40-11:30 a.m. in Grinter 471, the Center for African Studies’ conference room.
I’m happy to announce that a new paper with colleagues David Kennedy, Ricardo Godoy, and Bill Leonard just appeared in the Journal of Anthropological Research.
The article, “Methods for collecting panel data: What can cultural anthropology learn from other disciplines?” argues that the key theoretical concerns of cultural anthropology imply a need for panel data, but that we lag behind other disciplines in making use of panel designs. Drawing on Godoy and Leonard’s experience running the Tsimane’ Amazonian Panel Study (TAPS), we make practical suggestions for how and why to collect panel data in cultural anthropology.
Here’s the abstract:
In this article, we argue for the increased use of panel data in cultural anthropology. Panel data, or repeated measures from the same units of observation at different times, have proliferated across the social sciences, with the exception of anthropology. The lack of panel data in anthropology is puzzling, since panel data are among the best for analyzing continuity and change—central concerns of anthropological theory. Panel data also establish temporal order in causal analysis and potentially improve the reliability and accuracy of measurement. We review how researchers in anthropology and neighboring disciplines have dealt with the unique challenges of collecting panel data and draw lessons for minimizing the adverse consequences of measurement error, for reducing attrition, and for ensuring continuity in management, archiving, documentation, financing, and leadership. We argue that increased use of panel data has the potential to advance empirical knowledge and contribute to anthropological theory.
A manuscript version of the article is available here. I’d be happy to send a PDF of the final, published version to anyone who’s interested — leave a comment below or drop me a line.
Teaching four courses this semester, rather than my usual two, has presented new challenges in managing my time. Among other things, my usual approach of trying to schedule meetings with students during standing office hours has broken down. With 650 undergraduates and 20 graduate students enrolled in my courses — not to mention my own grad students — I spend almost as much time trying to schedule meetings with students as I do actually meeting with them.
So I have decided to experiment with a new approach to holding office hours. For the rest of the semester, I will meet with students by appointment only. What’s new here is that students — and anyone else, for that matter — can now see my calendar and schedule a meeting during any time we’re both free. You’ll also notice a new “Make Appointment” link on my home page. The calendar and scheduling service is provided by Tungle.
I welcome feedback from students about whether this approach works for you.
