In this short piece, I explore how medical anthropology could be deployed through interdisciplinary collaborations in a way that is both theoretically rich and poised to positively impact health outcomes. In particular, I consider how research agendas focused on improving health care outcomes reveal certain limitations and underlying assumptions within the discipline. What types of methodological shifts might occur if …
Category Archives: Features
PrEP at the Margins: Towards a Critically Applied Anthropology of Nordic PrEP Access
This article is part of the series: A 'Critically Applied' Approach to PrEP
In the spirit of this series on a ‘critically applied’ approach to PrEP, this piece shows how thinking with the concept of marginality can contribute to an analysis of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), and how this new HIV preventive technology can help us uncover issues of health disparities, even in spaces of affluence with state-provided health care. More specifically, this piece …
Internet-Based Access to PrEP in the U.S.: A “Critically Applied” Approach and the Symbolic Effects of a Clinical-Technological Assemblage
This article is part of the series: A 'Critically Applied' Approach to PrEP
Introduction
…“I‘d been trying to get PrEP through my physician at the time, and …I had to print up all these studies and all the prescription information because my doctor was like, ‘Well, you don’t have HIV.’ And I’m like, ‘I know. That’s the point. I don’t want to get it.’ And he’s like, ‘Well, [Truvada] is not for that.’
Life/NonLife: a forum
This Somatosphere forum features essays written in the wake of a debate held at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. The debate was organized around the following motion: “Lacking empirical traction and heuristic power, the distinction between life and nonlife is one that anthropology needs to discard.” We hope …
Suffering, Agency, and the Value of Early and Late Life
‘Do no harm’ is the first principle in both research ethics and bioethics, conveying an inherent ambiguity in the biomedical imperative to create healthier and longer human lives. As such, both medical intervention and research have always straddled the delicate border between care and violence, exposing how doing good can be easily transformed into or confused with doing harm. This …
“Zero infections. Zero deaths. Zero stigma.”
This article is part of the series: A 'Critically Applied' Approach to PrEP
The UNAIDS mission of “Getting to Zero” is supported by three key goals: “Zero infections. Zero deaths. Zero stigma.” By taking up this mission, the San Francisco Department of Public Health (DPH) increased its dedication to ending the epidemic. DPH aims to realize these goals by expanding access to PrEP, ensuring RAPID (Rapid ART Program for HIV Diagnoses) linkage to …