Breathtaking: Asthma Care in a Time of Climate Change
University of Minnesota Press, 2018. 236 pages.
Asthma is thought to affect an estimated 339 million people around the globe, with a prevalence rates as high as 20% of adults in some nations (Global Asthma Network 2018). It is one of the most common chronic conditions, impacting people across …
One Blue Child: Asthma, Responsibility, and the Politics of Global Health
Stanford University Press, 2017, 262 pages.
Bringing children to the field can change an anthropologist’s relationship to fieldwork immensely. For University of Auckland anthropologist, Susanna Trnka, bringing her children to the Czech Republic quickly became a confronting medical experience when her nine-year-old daughter suffered her …
The latest issue of The Lancet features a large section on asthma which includes a wonderful short essay by medical anthropologist Ian Whitmarsh, titled “Asthma and the value of contradictions.” Whitmarsh, who is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine at UCSF, recently published a monograph based on his fieldwork following …