Exam 14: Health, Illness, and the Body

What is one important part of medical treatment that the biomedical model overlooks?

Laurent Pordié and Nomad RSI, a French NGO, helped local amchis:

Linda's health insurance does not cover contraception and only covers one annual preventative gynecological visit. That same insurance covers her husband's Viagra prescription and numerous checkups. This is an example of:

An amchi and a cardiovascular surgeon:

The human ecosystem, composed of trillions of organisms in the human body, is understood as what?

Research revealed that residents of neighborhood X, a low-income area with few commercial businesses apart from convenience stores, had higher incidence of cardio-vascular disease than residents of the affluent neighborhood Y, which had a wide selection of grocery stores, farmer's markets, drugstore chains, exercise facilities, as well as private gyms. What non-biological factor is likely to be associated with risk of cardiovascular disease in these communities?

Emily spent her summer vacation in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she got plastic surgery for a fraction of what it would cost in the United States. This is an example of:

British biomedicine:

If you are sick enough to miss class, the social agreement about sickness suggests that you should:

What was one of the immediate results of the Zanmi Lasante water project?

What is one important reason that medical anthropology has grown significantly since the 1980s?

What is biomedicine, and how do its practitioners view and treat diseases? Discuss two criticisms that anthropologists have about the European biases in the model.

Paul Farmer's work in Haiti using anthropological tools led him to recognize that these same tools could also do what?

Paul Farmer found poor rural Haitian residents experiencing very high rates of malnutrition, dysentery, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS. Many of these residents were water refugees due to the construction of a hydroelectric dam that provided water to cities and large landholders that had flooded their valley. This problem underlines the difficulty of providing adequate health care in the face of ________.

The prevalence of HIV/AIDS across the globe has evoked varied health care responses. For example, in Thailand, where it is accepted that HIV/AIDS occurs among all segments of a population, a successful program stemmed its spread; however, in other countries, a mixture of denial that HIV/AIDS is a problem for all segments of society and deeply internalized homophobia have resulted in disastrous treatment plans and increased rates of transmission. How would you use anthropological approaches to design an effective local HIV/AIDS prevention program? In your answer describe at least 3 aspects of the larger problem that you would tackle and the approaches or methods you would take to solve them. You may draw on the cases discussed in the text.

How do medical anthropologists distinguish between disease and illness?

Anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer took many steps to improve health conditions in the rural community of Cange. What was one of the most important first steps?

How does Anne Fadiman's research among Hmong refugees in California illustrate the conflicts that can arise between Western and non-Western approaches to health care and treatment? Describe Lia Lee's health condition, including how her parents' understanding of it differed from physicians' understanding of her condition. What experiences did this family have as a result of cross-cultural misunderstandings?

Today, medical anthropology uses the term "ethnomedicine" to refer to:

According to the text, Mayan women of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula typically gave birth in a hammock. What else usually happened during the birth event?