Browsing by Subject "World Health"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Anthropology, knowledge-flows and global health.
    (Global public health, 2010-01) Feierman, S; Kleinman, A; Stewart, K; Farmer, D; Das, V
    Global health programmes are damaged by blockages in the upward flow of information from localities and regional centres about realities of professional practice and about patients' lives and conditions of treatment. Power differentials between local actors and national or international decision-makers present further obstacles to effective action. Anthropological research and action, in its most effective current forms, make important contributions to these issues. This research often continues over the long term, intensively. It can be multi-sited, studying actors at local, national and international levels simultaneously. It studies the relative knowledge and power of impoverished patients and global decision-makers, all within a single frame. By doing so, anthropological research is capable of providing new and important insights on the diverse meanings of patient decision-making, informed consent, non-compliance, public health reporting, the building of political coalitions for health and many other issues.
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    Okukkera Ng'omuzungu (lost in translation): understanding the social value of global health research for HIV/AIDS research participants in Uganda.
    (Global public health, 2010-01) Stewart, K; Sewankambo, N
    As major global governance entities begin to re-assess the structure and goals of health research in resource-poor settings, social science can make a vital contribution by expanding the traditional field of research ethics to include new concepts such as the social value of global health research. This essay recasts the definition of social value in health research by shifting away from the official spaces where research occurs and towards the meaning of research as it is produced in the everyday spaces inhabited by the local community. We present three cases that reveal the local view of the social value of health research for Ugandans: autonomy and consent; the concept of risk; and what appears to be a classic case of therapeutic misconception between researcher and informant. Ultimately what we see, we argue, is the fundamental collision of the logic of biomedical research with the logic of local social relationships, that is, researchers perform their role as a transaction, while participants anticipate their involvement in research to be transformative. When we expand the analysis of the impact of research from the research/participant dyad to shifting community networks, we conclude that didactic models, such as the therapeutic misconception, are of limited utility for understanding the social value of global health research in resource-poor settings.
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    University leadership for innovation in global health and HIV/AIDS diagnostics.
    (Global public health, 2010-01) Palamountain, KM; Stewart, KA; Krauss, A; Kelso, D; Diermeier, D
    Medical products used in the developed world often fail to adequately serve resource-limited settings where electricity, transportation and health care workers are not readily available. We suggest that the problem is not only a lack of coordinated financial resources to purchase existing medical products, but also a lack of products that are specifically designed for resource-limited settings. While donor organisations with a focus on global health are increasingly willing to bear the additional financial risk for the research and development of such high-impact medical products, corporations are still reluctant to take their best scientists and engineers away from more commercially attractive projects. Universities, on the other hand, given their teaching and research missions, are well positioned to engage in such high-risk development projects. A group of biomedical, engineering, business and social science researchers at Northwestern University (NU) propose a creative model to address significant social and health needs. The team's initial product focus is a rapid test for diagnosing infants with HIV. The NU model aligns the incentives and expertise of industry, donors and academia to innovate medical products, such as the infant HIV diagnostic test, for resource-limited settings.
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    Values and moral experience in global health: bridging the local and the global.
    (Global public health, 2010-01) Stewart, KA; Keusch, GT; Kleinman, A