Clarence C. Gravlee

This week the Society for Applied Anthropology will hold it annual meeting in Mérida, México. University of Florida anthropologists usually have a strong presence at these meetings, and this year is no exception. Allan Burns, Chair of our Department, is the current President of SfAA, and UF alumnus Francisco Fernandez, now Associate Rector at Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, is one of the program chairs.

Here are the papers I know about by current faculty and students affiliated with medical anthropology at UF. There are, of course, many more papers by UF anthropologists working on other topics, especially ecology and development. If I’ve overlooked any UF medical anthropologists, please leave a comment to let me know. The papers are listed in chronological order, with session numbers in parentheses.

MARTEN, Meredith (U Florida) Health Care Sustainability and Civil Society in Sub-Saharan Africa. (W-66)

RAHIM-WILLIAMS, Bridgett (U Florida) and SAMARAWICKREMA, Indira. An Exploratory Study of Type 2 Diabetes among African American Women in the U.S. and Women in Sri Lanka (W-70)

SCHULTZ, Alan (U Florida) Happiness, Trust and Reciprocity in a Highly Self-Sufficient Society (TH-33)

BOLIN, Anne (Elon U), WHELEHAN, Patricia (SUNY-Potsdam), BOLTON, Ralph (Pomona Coll, Chijnaya Fdn), GRAVLEE, Clarence C. (U Florida), and FELDMAN, Douglas A. (SUNY-Brockport) Issues in Teaching Human Sexuality: Sexual Orientations (TH-69)

GRAVLEE, Clarence C. (U Florida) Race, Racism, and the Neurobiology of Stress: Implications for Ethnography (TH-98)

HOPKINS, Allison (U Florida) Globalization and Medicinal Plant Remedy Knowledge Acquisition and Variation in Tabi, Yucatan, Mexico (TH-125)

D’ERRICO, Nicole C. (U Florida) Born in Violence: The Consequences of Sexually Violent Conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (TH-127)

DOLWICK GRIEB, Suzanne (U Florida) Strained Communication: HIV Stigma in a Migrant Community (F-11)

STAGGS, Kristin (Duval Cty Hlth Dept) and WINTERBAUER, Nancy (U Florida, Duval Cty Hlth Dept) The Integration and Application of Identity Theory with the Behavioral Health Stages of Change Model (F-35)

RAHIM-WILLIAMS, Bridgett (U Florida) The Self as Subject: Interpreting Diabetes Self-management (F-35)

MONROE, Douglas A., GRAVLEE, Clarence C., and MCCARTY, Christopher (U Florida) Ethnography and Measurement in Public Health Research: Everyday Racism among African Americans (F-35)

RANHORN, Kathryn (U Florida) Homelessness in Gainesville: An Ethnography of Illness, Social Network, and Criminalization (F-93)

TOVAR, Jose A. (U Florida) Lucha de Titanes: Interactions with Collaborative Research Intervention Projects (S-9)

MCCARTY, Christopher, MONROE, Douglas, and GRAVLEE, Clarence (U Florida) Personal Social Networks and the Experience of Racism among African Americans: Implications for Health Disparities (S-37)

For a complete listing or more detail, see the Preliminary Program (PDF) at the SfAA website. ¡Nos vemos en Mérida!

Today I’ll be giving an online presentation as part of an EPA-sponsored webinar (where did that word come from?) on “The Use of Race in Environmental Health Research: What Does/Could It Mean?” The event is a precursor to a symposium EPA will host in two weeks, “Strengthening Environmental Justice Research and Decision Making: A Symposium on the Science of Disproportionate Environmental Health Impacts.” I’m very happy to join Gilbert Gee and Charmaine Royal on the panel.

The event is being recorded, and my understanding is that the audio and slide presentations will be posted online soon. When that happens, I’ll update this post with the link.

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.

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.

From Flickr user Natashalatrasha

Many students and colleagues in medical anthropology may be interested in the Medical Humanities Program in the UF College of Medicine. In particular, it would be great to see more med anthro students participating in the course on Narrative Medicine and the Medical Humanities, which is coordinated by Nina Stoyan-Rosenzweig, Director of the Medical Humanities Program. Here are the stated goals of the course:

• Explore the role of narrative in improving understanding of patients and the patient experience
• Explore the role of arts and humanities in improving medical practice, eg observational skills
• Explore ways in which the humanities can improve understanding of social and cultures issues affecting health and the delivery of health care
• Explore specific issues vital to the understanding of health and the delivery of health care

Narrative Medicine is an elective for fourth-year medical students, and it would benefit both the med students and the anthropologists to have more dialogue across disciplinary boundaries. Access the full schedule here (PDF) and contact Nina Stoyan-Rosenzweig if you are interested in joining the group.

The Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee (HEAT) will hold its next meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 22, at 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. in Conference Room A at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital. Here are the highlights from the proposed agenda:

• Hopefully we will be able to report good news from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation about our application to the Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities program for work on policy change to promote access to healthy foods in Leon County. Fingers crossed!
• We will get an update on community events we will help to organize during the re-broadcast of Unnatural Causes on WFSU in January.
• We will discuss our project on stress, racism, and blood pressure. I will present preliminary results on experiences of racism among African Americans in Tallahassee, and we will discuss the ethical and political implications of collecting genetic data in the later community survey.

Please join us and add your voice to the conversation. Contact me if you would like to reserve a dinner ($5) or if you have other items you’d like to add to the agenda.

The next meeting of the Health Equity Alliance (HEAT) will take place Tuesday, September 1, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital. We will get on update on recent activities and discuss plans to develop a Food Policy Council to address childhood obesity and the food environment. We will also screen a brief excerpt of the documentary series Unnatural Causes and develop a plan for co-organizing a community screening and forum on the social determinants of health.

HEAT is a community-academic partnership to promote community-based participatory research on health equity in the Tallahassee area. Our mission is to bridge the gap between research and action to explain and eliminate social inequalities in health. For more information or to get involved, see the HEAT website.

The theme of this year’s Bacardi Family Lecture Series, sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies at UF, is “Health and Policy in Latin America and the Caribbean.” As part of this series, five distinguished scholars and public health officials will visit campus this semester to deliver public lectures about strategies for meeting the most pressing public health challenges in the region:

September 14 – Arachu Castro, PhD, MPH; Harvard Medical School

Responding to Public Health Priorities in Latin America and the Caribbean: From Academic Research to Policy Setting to Clinical Practice

September 28 – Álvaro Quijano, MD; Yucatán Department of Health

Human Influenza H1N1 (Swine Flu) in Yucatán, Mexico

October 12 – Carles Muntaner, PhD, MD; University of Toronto

Misión Bario Adentro (Inside the Neighborhood): The Concept of Health as a Human Right—Venezuela

October 12 – Maria Eugenia Morales, PhD; Universidad del Valle de Guatemala

Mosquito-Borne Diseases and Public Health Challenges in Guatemala

November 9 – James A. Trostle, PhD, MPH; Trinity College

The Road to Better Health? Economic Development and Infectious Disease in Ecuador

Graduate students at UF have a unique opportunity to interact with the Bacardi lecturers and to deepen their understanding of global health by participating in a special graduate course. The course is linked to the lecture series and will include journal club sessions and special seminar presentations by the visiting Bacardi lecturers. It also aims to foster interdisciplinary collaboration. The five co-instructors, including me, represent the Colleges of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Medicine, Public Health and Health Professions, and Veterinary Medicine. We hope to attract students from across these colleges as well. (Separate course numbers are available in anthropology, Latin American Studies, veterinary medicine, and public health).

Stay tuned for updates about the graduate course and lecture series as the semester moves on.

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.

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

Reading List

Update, 8/15/09: Better late than never, here are the readings we recommended at the workshop back in March. Due to copyright, PDFs are password-protected for workshop participants only.

Crabtree, B. F., & Miller, W. L. (1992). A template approach to text analysis: developing and using codebooks. In B. F. Crabtree & W. L. Miller (Eds.), Doing Qualitative Research (pp. 93-109). Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

Hirschman, E. C. (1987). People as products: analysis of a complex marketing exchange. Journal of Marketing, 51, 98-108.

Kearney, M. H., Murphy, S., Irwin, K., & Rosenbaum, M. (1995). Salvaging self: a grounded theory of pregnancy on crack cocaine. Nursing Research, 44(4), 208-213.

MacQueen, K. M., McLellan, E., Kay, K., & Milstein, B. (1998). Codebook development for team-based qualitative analysis. Cultural Anthropology Methods, 10(2), 31-36.

Nolan, J. M., & Ryan, G. W. (2000). Fear and loathing at the cineplex: gender differences in descriptions and perceptions of slasher films. Sex Roles, 42(1/2), 39-56.

Quinn, N. (1982). "Commitment" in American marriage: a cultural analysis. American Ethnologist, 9(4), 775-798.

Ryan, G., & Bernard, H. R. (2000). Data management and analysis methods. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research (2nd ed., pp. 769-802). Walnut Creek: Sage.

Ryan, G., & Bernard, H. R. (2003). Techniques to identify themes. Field Methods, 15(1), 85-109.

Ryan, G. W., & Weisner, T. (1998). Content analysis of words in brief descriptions: How fathers and mothers describe their children. In V. C. de Munck & E. J. Sobo (Eds.), Using methods in the field: A practical introduction and casebook (pp. 57-68). Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.