providing rapid anthropological expertise
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‘
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
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
Submission accepted at https://forms.gle/8Jkfy6BSMGxQEQeG8
All submissions due by September 1, 2022.
Check out the new slide deck from Dr. Mark Nichter reviewing the COVID-19 variants, public health balancing act, and public health citizenship.
Check out the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control excellent Info-graph of the variants
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 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)
Check out the newest set of COVID resources slide deck focused on Health Care Workers -cases-mortality- stress and burnout and attrition. Health-care workers account for 1 in 7 coronavirus cases recorded by the World Health Organization. We need to focus effort on protecting these vulnerable frontline workers.
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
| From the award website: The SMA’s Anthropological Responses to Health Emergencies Special Interest Group is recognized for rapidly mobilizing a wide range of valuable information resources in response to the emerging COVID-19 pandemic, including a series of highly informative webinars, online background information resources, and an expanded roster of content area specialists ready to share their insights with response partner organizations and affected communities. AAA Presidents’ Award Information ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We are so honored to be recognized for our Special Interest Group’s work on COVID-19 and for the efforts of everyone involved in the webinars, the calls to action, the workshops, business meetings, and panel presentations that ARHE has sponsored or assisted with since 2016 on Zika, Ebola, Measles, and now COVID-19. Thank you to everyone involved in the Special Interest Group. Thank you to the American Anthropological Association for your recognition of our work and the mission of our Special Interest Group. Kristin Hedges (Grand Valley State University) Deon Claiborne (Michigan State University) Co-Chairs, Anthropological Responses to Health Emergencies |
As the United States continues to break single-day records in new coronavirus cases, stay up to date in latest information by reviewing a COVID-19 primer by Dr. Mark Nichter and other useful resources such as how to read COVID statistics and details on the Arizona outbreak.
