A Companion to Medical Anthropology

Merrill Singeris Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Singer’s work has focused on infectious disease (including COVID-19), syndemics, and environmental health. He is the author of 34 books, and over 220 peer-reviewed articles. Social justice, the social determinants of health, climate change, and critical medical anthropology have been enduring themes of his research and applied work. His most recent books are titled Climate Change and Social Inequality: The Health and Social Costs of Global Warming (Routledge, 2018) and EcoCrises Interaction: Human Health and the Changing Environment (Wiley, 2021).

Elisa (E. J.) Sobois Professor and Chair of Anthropology at San Diego State University. Recent projects concern the intersection between health and education, vaccination choice, cannabis use for children with intractable epilepsy, and conspiratorial thinking. Sobo is currently part of the CommuniVax coalition, a nationwide participatory action research initiative focused on community-based capacity building for an equitable and effective COVID-19 vaccination rollout. Past president of the Society for Medical Anthropology, and current Section Assembly Convener for the American Anthropological Association, Sobo has published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and has authored, coauthored, and coedited 13 books—including second editions of both Dynamics of Human Biocultural Diversity: A Unified Approach and The Cultural Context of Health, Illness, and Medicine . Her work has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered and by The New York Times , The Washington Post , and other news outlets.

Patricia K. Townsendholds a courtesy appointment as Research Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, the University at Buffalo. She is author of multiple editions of two widely used college textbooks, Medical Anthropology in Ecological Perspective (with Ann McElroy) and Environmental Anthropology: From Pigs to Policy . ​ She has done fieldwork in lowland Papua, New Guinea, and Peru and at toxic waste sites in the United States. She has done applied work with refugees and religious groups in the United States and maternal and child health services in Papua, New Guinea. In retirement, she has turned to environmental activism at a nuclear waste site, serving on the West Valley Citizen Task Force.

Robert T. Trotter, II, began publishing applied oriented cross-cultural research in the fields of culturally competent health-care delivery and culturally sensitive approaches to substance use and misuse and in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas in 1976, based on research on culturally influenced communication on patient interactions and substance abuse prevention processes (including information from traditional healers on the US Mexico border), as well as cross-cultural comparisons of alcohol use among Hispanic and Anglo college students. In the 1980s his research focus included institutionally oriented research on migrant health and cross-cultural health-care systems, and in the 1990s evolved into research on the confluence of substance abuse and the pandemic spread of HIV, with a focus on prevention research in a multicultural context, including a special focus on social structure, social determinants of health, and cultural applicability design for institutional change, including institutional change in corporate cultures. Subsequent research, in the 2000s to present, has focused on both domestic and international research associated with NIH, the Surgeon General’s office (RARE: Rapid Assessment, Response and Evaluation), CDC (I-RARE), and WHO (International Classification of Disabilities). Dr. Trotter’s current applied research includes prevention and intervention–oriented research focused on the confluence of criminal justice conditions, converging comorbidities, and substance abuse, and on the interaction of the social determinants of health and infectious disease transmission (including sociocultural approaches combined with cutting-edge genomic studies), in both general populations and in institutional (hospital) populations. Dr. Trotter’s applied oriented research includes involvement as P.I. on NIH RO1s, U01s, T-32s, as well as other roles (Co-PI, mPI, Investigator, Evaluator) on NIH U54s, R01s, U01s, as well as funding for CDC and WHO projects. Dr. Trotter has served as an ad hoc and regular member of NIH study sections for NIDA, NIMHD, NIMH, and CDC. Dr. Trotter currently serves as Lead Core Director for the Research Infrastructure Core (RIC) for the NAU Southwest Health Equities Research Collaborative (SHERC) (NIMHD U54MD012388), as well as a Senior Scientist for the NAU Center for Health Equity Research (CHER). Both roles are focused on mentoring early career investigators in relation to both qualitative and quantitative methods, technology, and research design.

E. Christian Wellsis Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Brownfields Research & Redevelopment at the University of South Florida, where he served previously as the Founding Director of the Office of Sustainability and as Deputy Director of the Patel School of Global Sustainability. Dr. Wells is an applied environmental anthropologist committed to improving human and environmental health outcomes of re/development efforts in marginalized communities. With support from the National Science Foundation and the US Environmental Protection Agency, his research examines water and sanitation infrastructure transitions in underserved communities in the United States, Central America, and the Caribbean. Dr. Wells is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is the recipient of the Sierra Club’s Black Bear Award in recognition of outstanding dedication to sustainability and the environment. He currently serves as President of the Florida Brownfields Association, the state’s largest nonprofit advocacy organization dedicated to improving public health through environmental justice.

Linda M. Whiteford, PhD, MPH, is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of South Florida where she was Associate Vice President for Global Strategies, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and Strategic Initiatives, and Vice Provost. Dr. Whiteford was also the Founding Co-Director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Social Marketing and Social Justice at USF. She is past President of the Society for Applied Anthropology and the 2018 recipient of the Sol Tax Award for contributions to applied anthropology. Her research focuses on translating anthropological research into global health policies and practices, particularly concerning infectious and contagious water-related diseases. Dr. Whiteford’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, and she consults for the World Bank and The US Agency for International Development. Significant publications include Primary Health Care in Cuba: The Other Revolution ; Anthropological Ethics for Research and Practice ; Globalization, Water and Health: Resources in Times of Scarcity ; and Global Health in Times of Violence .

Merrill Singer, Pamela I. Erickson, and César Abadía-Barrero

Medical Anthropology is a “baby boomer” of sorts. It came into being alongside the unprecedented interest in the health and wellbeing of Third World peoples in the aftermath of WWII when the world was full of the hope and possibility that science, in this case biomedicine, could alleviate human suffering due to infectious disease and malnutrition, and then help eliminate or control many of the world’s major health problems. Many anthropologists of that era worked with the international health community (WHO, USAID, UNICEF, etc.) to bring biomedicine to the world. The presumption guiding this effort was that shown the effectiveness of biomedicine and modern public health methods (e.g., the health value of boiling water before drinking it), while addressing contextual and cultural barriers to change, people would readily adopt new ways and the threat of many diseases would begin to diminish. Seven decades later, a large proportion of the morbidity and mortality in our world is still due to the same tenacious problems of malnutrition, pregnancy-related complications, infectious diseases, and lack of access to high-quality health care. Although some of the diseases, like HIV/AIDS, are new, one old disease but only one, smallpox, has been eliminated. With economic development, the so-called Third World was re-branded in terms of the size of each country’s economy as low- or middle-income countries. With more “development,” these countries started to experience a mixed epidemiologic profile: “diseases of poverty,” on the one hand (Farmer 2003), and chronic conditions such as cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, on the other. The raising awareness of the world interconnectedness demonstrated how health profiles depended on key social determinants of global health such as living and working conditions; level of education; neighborhood characteristics; and access to water, sanitation, and health care services which are exacerbated by escalating levels of poverty, inequalities, war, genocide, and greed (Singer and Erickson 2013).