Welcome to ARHE website

Anthropological Responses to Health Emergencies (ARHE) is a Special Interest Group of the Society for Medical Anthropology. The purpose of the group is to network among members to be able to rapidly respond to developing public health issues and emergencies.

Please see our ‘Call to Action

2023 ARHE Policy Brief Award Winners

The ARHE Awards Committee is thrilled to announce the 2023 Policy Brief winners.  The Committee was extremely impressed with the quality of submissions and examples of the power of anthropology to inform policy. Please join us in congratulating:

Student winner: Taylor J. Arnold for his policy brief entitled Latinx Child Farmworkers in North Carolina: Heat-Related Illness

Professional winner: Magdalena Stawkowski for her policy brief entitled Forgotten Ground Zeros: Local Populations Exposed to Radiation from Former Nuclear Test Sites

2023 ARHE Policy Brief Award

We are excited to announce that the 2023 ARHE Policy Brief Award is now open for submissions. The aim of the award is to encourage and acknowledge the contributions of anthropologists by providing the humanistic side of policy recommendations for responding to health emergencies.

There are two levels for the award (student and professional), both have a $100 award each. 

Criteria

  • No more than 10 pages
  • All health emergencies topics are accepted
  • Must integrate anthropological insights necessary for a successful response effort

Submission accepted at https://forms.gle/8Jkfy6BSMGxQEQeG8 

All submissions due by September 15, 2023.

2022 ARHE Policy Brief Award Winners

The ARHE Awards Committee is thrilled to announce the 2022 Policy Brief winners.  Please join us in congratulating:

Student winner: Alyssa Basmajian for her policy brief entitled Doulas offer compassionate abortion care and counter stigma

Professional winner: CommuniVax for their policy brief entitled Carrying Equity in COVID-19 Vaccination Forward: Guidance Informed by Communities of Color. Visit https://www.communivax.org/our-work for the full report and other resources

Professional winner: Megan Schmidt-Sane for her policy brief entitled COVID-19 vaccines and (dis)trust among minoritized youth in Ealing, London, United Kingdom. Visit https://www.socialscienceinaction.org/search?post_types=resources for the full report and other resource https://www.socialscienceinaction.org/search?post_types=resources

ARHE Policy Brief Award

We are excited to announce the first annual ARHE Policy Brief Award is now open for submissions. The aim of the award is to encourage and acknowledge the contributions of anthropologists by providing the humanistic side of policy recommendations for responding to health emergencies.

There are two levels for the award (student and professional), both have a $100 award each. 

Criteria

  • No more than 10 pages
  • All health emergencies topics are accepted
  • Must integrate anthropological insights necessary for a successful response effort

Submission accepted at https://forms.gle/8Jkfy6BSMGxQEQeG8 

All submissions due by September 1, 2022.

Communivax

Exciting new project launched out of Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health: Communivax. “The coalition will conduct rapid ethnographic research related to COVID-19 vaccination among historically underserved communities of color in the United States. Local research teams will listen to community members and work with them to develop suggestions on how to strengthen COVID-19 vaccine delivery and communication strategies”.

The Great Barrington Declaration is dangerous

The argument to “open up” society for everyone who is determined to not be at high risk does not take into account the true numbers of who fits in that category.

•Obesity, increasing age, diabetes, and other cardiometabolic conditions are just a few of the factors that have been observed to be associated with an increased risk of severe COVID-19 illness and/or death.

•In 2017-2018, over 35% of the entire US population (children and adults) were determined to be obese

•Furthermore, it is estimated that 13% of the adult US population has diabetes.

•This doesn’t even take into account the percentage of US adults that have other pre-existing conditions that put them at greater risk of severe COVID-19.

Click here for a critical review of the Great Barrington Declaration (by Collin Catalfamo, MPH 1,  Mark Nichter, PhD, MPH 2 from University of Arizona)

Action Needed: COVID-19 Pandemic

The HCW Hosted team of healthcare workers & family members, public health professionals, and health social scientists has launched an advocacy campaign to encourage the public to stay the course with COVID-19 recommendations as a means of protecting  themselves, their communities  and our healthcare workers. 

We need your support to get the word out! Please sign and share the HEALTH CITIZEN PLEDGE: healthcitizenpledge.org  

We are in the early days of the Pledge, trying to build momentum so every share, every endorsement, every signature counts!  Once we have enough signatures, we will be taking the Pledge to elected officials to ask them to support the Pledge and we will hold them accountable. The WHO recently came out  with a call to government leaders to keep healthcare workers safe. The Pledge echoes this plea. It is your opportunity to stand with our health care workers and reaffirm your commitment to the social contract upon which our democracy is based. And if  you are a member of an organization that would like to co-sponsor the Pledge , please let me know.

 Mark Nichter : Lifetime member of the AAA,  former president of the SMA, one of the founding members of HCWhosted.org