The Politics and Culture of Medicine and Disease in Central America

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Carey Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Central America ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Health Campaigns ◽  
Public Health Campaigns

With its diverse ecological zones and varied public health threats that ranged from lowland epidemic to highland endemic diseases, Central America is a challenging place to practice healthcare. In addition to topography and geography, social relations have also influenced the dynamic, contested, and negotiated process of healthcare in developing countries. Adversarial relations among indigenous people, African immigrants and slaves, and the state marked the region’s pasts. After the Spanish conquest established racist structures that favored Hispanic citizens by instituting forced labor mechanisms and limiting access to political, economic, and social power, colonists extracted land and labor from indigenous communities. Although most countries assumed that adopting Hispanic customs would improve the lives of indigenous and Afro-Central Americans, many elites felt such workers’ health was important only insofar as it did not impede their ability to labor. Characterized by holistic approaches to health that took into account psychological, emotional, and physical well-being, indigenous and other traditional healing practices flourished even after states embraced the fields of bacteriology and parasitology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Primarily served by curanderos, midwives, bonesetters, and other traditional healers for generations, some remote rural communities were isolated from schooled medicine and its practitioners. In other rural communities and cities, hybrid healthcare offered patients palatable and efficacious healing options. As doctors became politicians and states embraced science to modernize their nations, politics and public health became inextricably linked. Often with the assistance of multinational companies and nongovernmental organizations, governments deployed scientific medicine and public health campaigns to undergird assimilationist projects. Based on assumptions that traditional medicine was impotent and indigenous people and African descendants were vectors of disease, public health campaigns often discounted, rejected, or persecuted the healing practices of such peoples. When authorities embraced rather than problematized the confluences of race and health, they enjoyed some success. Yet neither authoritarian nor democratic governments could establish a medical monopoly.

scholarly journals Epidemics, indigenous communities, and public health in the COVID-19 era: views from smallpox inoculation campaigns in colonial Guatemala

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 380-393
Author(s):  
Martha Few
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Mortality Rates ◽  
Health Campaigns ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Public Health Campaigns ◽  
Smallpox Inoculation

AbstractThis article explores the tensions between well-intentioned humanitarianism and coercive colonialism during smallpox outbreaks in eighteenth-century Guatemala, when the state extended inoculation programmes to its predominant, culturally diverse Maya communities. Evidence from anti-epidemic campaigns shows public debates broadly comparable to the current COVID-19 crisis: debates about the measurably higher mortality rates for indigenous people and other marginalized groups; debates about the extent of the state’s responsibility for the health of its peoples; and debates on whether or not coercion and violence should be used to ensure compliance with quarantines and public health campaigns. While inoculations provided medical assistance and material help to Maya communities, and resulted in demonstrably lower mortality rates from smallpox, at the same time they functioned as avenues for the expansion of colonial power to intervene in the daily lives of people in those communities, characterized by colonial actors as necessary for their own good, and for the broader public good.

scholarly journals Trustworthiness of Doctors from Public Health Campaigns

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Koed Madsen
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Message Content ◽  
Health Campaigns ◽  
Four Dimensions ◽  
Exploratory Factor Analyses ◽  
Ethical Stance ◽  
Public Health Campaigns ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Meta Analyses ◽  
The Impact

Previous research concerning the effectiveness of public health campaigns have explored the impact of message design, message content, communication channel choice and other aspects of such campaigns. Meta analyses reported in the literature reveal, however, that the choice of endorsers in health campaigns remains unexplored. The present study addresses this gap in the literature by studying what makes doctors from public health campaigns appear trustworthy in the eyes of the receiver. The present research examines propensity for trust as well facets of trustworthiness of such expert doctors based on a survey carried out in the UK (155 respondents). Underlying factors of trustworthiness are explored to gain more insight into the understanding of how trust may affect the public’s belief updating and the formation of intentions. Exploratory factor analyses suggest four dimensions of trustworthiness. Multiple regression analyses demonstrate that these factors explain almost 70% of the variance in the participants’ expressed trust in doctors from public health campaigns. Doctors’ ethical stance and their care for the health of the general population appear to be more important for perceived trustworthiness than their actual professional background, although their abilities and competences are closely related to ethics and benevolence. For policy makers this has important implications when selecting endorsers for public health campaigns in order to design effective health related communication, for example to combat obesity.

scholarly journals Prevalence of Tobacco Use and Efforts for Tobacco Control in The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heeje Lee ◽  
Minah Kang ◽  
Sangchul Yoon ◽  
Kee B. Park
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Tobacco Control ◽  
Tobacco Use ◽  
Republic Of Korea ◽  
World Health ◽  
Online Media ◽  
Health Campaigns ◽  
Media Content Analysis ◽  
Public Health Campaigns ◽  
Health Organization

Abstract Tobacco use is one of the main public health concerns as it causes multiple diseases. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is one of the 168 signatory countries of the World Health Organization (WHO) member states agreed to adopt the WHO Framework Convention of Tobacco Control (FCTC). However, there is lack of information regarding the tobacco use in the DPRK and the government’s efforts for tobacco control. The aim of the study was to find the prevalence of tobacco use among the DPRK people and the government’s efforts to control tobacco use among its population, through literature review combined with online media content analysis. In 2020, the prevalence of tobacco smoking in males of 15 years and older was 46.1%, whereas that in females was zero. The online media contents showed the DPRK government’s stewardship to promote population health by controlling tobacco use. Furthermore, the DPRK government has taken steps to implement the mandates of the FCTC including introduction of new laws, promotion of research, development of cessation aids, as well as public health campaigns.

Cooperative Extension as a Force for Healthy, Rural Communities: Historical Perspectives and Future Directions

2020 ◽  
Vol 110 (9) ◽  
pp. 1300-1303
Author(s):  
David R. Buys ◽  
Roger Rennekamp
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Cooperative Extension ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Agricultural System ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
Faculty And Staff ◽  
Policy Systems

Cooperative Extension (Extension), part of the land-grant university system, has been engaged in rural communities for more than a century. While the focus of Extension’s efforts has largely centered on agriculture, there is an important thread of work that has similarities to public health. As Extension settles into its second century, we are working to be even more engaged in efforts that improve the health and well-being of rural communities in particular. Extension faculty and staff are accomplishing this through direct-to-the-population education and through partnerships with more classically oriented public health organizations able to leverage Extension’s networks and positive reputation in communities to engage them and improve their health. A component of these partnerships includes Extension faculty and staff increasingly engaging in policy, systems, and environment work and other initiatives that help ensure longer-term, systemic changes more likely to improve health outcomes. In short, Extension clearly changed the agricultural system of the United States, and because of its reach into rural communities, it has the capacity to do for health in rural communities in this second century what it did for agriculture in the first century.

Using ICT to Resolve the Modernization Paradox for Rural Communities in Africa

2010 ◽  
pp. 103-120
Author(s):  
Dawn Hinton ◽  
Joseph Ofori-Dankwa
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Sense Of Community ◽  
Well Being ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Rural Villages ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
Modernization Process ◽  
Economic Well Being

Rural communities are being heavily influenced by the ongoing modernization process taking place in all African economies and nations. Theoretically the modernization process is intended to help lead to an increase in the economic well being of the citizenry. However, one of the unanticipated outcomes of continuing urbanization and modernization, particularly for rural communities would be the loss of local social relations within such communities. This is similar to what happened in the Western context, where modernization, in the form of industrialization resulted in the loss of social relationships and increasing sense of alienation as cities formed. There is therefore a very real fear that in the African context, the ensuing modernization will result in a paradox where modernization may lead to an increase in economic well-being, but have the unintended consequence of increasing alienation and reducing the sense of community that exists in rural villages. The purpose of this chapter is two-fold. First, the authors theoretically explore the possibility of using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to develop a sense of community in rural villages and thus offset and mitigate the more negative aspects of the modernization process. Second, they propose a way to conceptualize this potential paradox by integrating the well established sociological concepts of Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (individualism) with current paradox models of diversity and similarity curves. Such an approach has pedagogical utility in helping to describe and explain the modern paradox confronted by most of the African countries.

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