Explanations for immigrant health outcomes often invoke culture through the use of the concept of acculturation. The over reliance on cultural explanations for immigrant health outcomes has been the ...topic of growing debate, with the critics’ main concern being that such explanations obscure the impact of structural factors on immigrant health disparities. In this paper, we highlight the shortcomings of cultural explanations as currently employed in the health literature, and argue for a shift from individual culture-based frameworks, to perspectives that address how multiple dimensions of inequality intersect to impact health outcomes. Based on our review of the literature, we suggest specific lines of inquiry regarding immigrants’ experiences with day-to-day discrimination, as well as on the roles that place and immigration policies play in shaping immigrant health outcomes. The paper concludes with suggestions for integrating intersectionality theory in future research on immigrant health.
► Cultural explanations for immigrant health outcomes obscure the impact of structural factors on immigrant health. ► A stronger emphasis on how place, racialization processes, and immigration policies impact immigrant health is necessary. ► We recommend an intersectional approach to the study of immigrant health. ► We suggest specific lines of inquiry regarding immigrants' experiences with racism and anti-immigrant policies, and their health impact. ► Interpreting available immigration-related measures requires fuller theorizing as to their context-specific meaning.
This study aimed to evaluate the cephalometric landmarks, cranial measurements, and cephalic index based on geographical and ethnic characteristics to make a database for the southwest Iranian ...population.
In this analytical cross-sectional study, different anatomic criteria were collected from head MRI images. The anthropometric measures taken included the maximum cranial length, maximum cranial height, maximum cranial breadth, cranial base length, foramen magnum length, upper facial height, lower facial height, foramen magnum breadth, bizygomatic breadth, orbital breadth, nasion-opisthion. The categorization of the head shape was based on the cephalic index. The cranial index was calculated using the equation (maximum cranial breadth/maximum cranial length × 100). These assessments were compared to define sexual dimorphism and inter-population variation in size and shape.
Sexual dimorphism existed in all cephalometric data except the cephalic index. The measurements comparisonin ethnicities showed that only (eu–eu) differs significantly between the two groups, which is 2,253 mm less in the Arab population compared to the Lur population (P value = 0.022). The cephalic index in males and females was found to be 73.66 and 75.08, respectively. Accordingly, 53.99% were dolichocephalic, 30.06% were mesocephalic, 14.11% were brachycephalic, and 1.84% were hyperbrachycephalic. The shape of the head had no relation to ethnicity but was related to sex (P value = 0.045). Conclusion: It is shown that cephalometric data can be used as diagnostic criteria to determine sex and ethnicity in the southwest Iranian population. It should be further verified on a greater sample size that evaluates more study age distribution.
•We aimed to evaluate cranial anthropometric indices using magnetic resonance imaging to make a database from the southwest Iranian population.•Cephalometric landmarks, cranial measurements, and cephalic index were calculated by evaluating different anatomic criteria.•Only euryon-euryon (eu–eu) differs significantly between the two groups, which is 2,253 mm less in the Arab population compared to the Lur population.
Paul Farmer Green, Andrew
Lancet,
2022-Mar-26, Volume:
399, Issue:
10331
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
A global health visionary who commanded the attention of world leaders, Paul Farmer “considered himself a physician to the poor first”, said Joia Mukherjee, Chief Medical Officer of Partners In ...Health (PIH). Farmer also headed the Division of Global Healthy Equity at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, which, along with Harvard anchored his work. PIH created the University Hospital of Mirebalais in central Haiti after the country's 2010 earthquake and helped found the University of Global Health Equity (UGHE) in Butaro, Rwanda, in 2015.
Social relations are a key aspect of aging and the life course. In this paper, we trace the scientific origins of the study of social relations, focusing in particular on research grounded in the ...convoy model.
We first briefly review and critique influential historical studies to illustrate how the scientific study of social relations developed. Next, we highlight early and current findings grounded in the convoy model that have provided key insights into theory, method, policy, and practice in the study of aging.
Early social relations research, while influential, lacked the combined approach of theoretical grounding and methodological rigor. Nevertheless, previous research findings, especially from anthropology, suggested the importance of social relations in the achievement of positive outcomes. Considering both life span and life course perspectives and grounded in a multidisciplinary perspective, the convoy model was developed to unify and consolidate scattered evidence while at the same time directing future empirical and applied research. Early findings are summarized, current evidence presented, and future directions projected.
The convoy model has provided a useful framework in the study of aging, especially for understanding predictors and consequences of social relations across the life course.
Thirty years since its first public use in 1980, the phrase structural adjustment remains obscure for many anthropologists and public health workers. However, structural adjustment programs (SAPs) ...are the practical tools used by international financial institutions (IFIs) such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to promote the market fundamentalism that constitutes the core of neoliberalism. A robust debate continues on the impact of SAPs on national economies and public health. But the stories that anthropologists tell from the field overwhelmingly speak to a new intensity of immiseration produced by adjustment programs that have undermined public sector services for the poor. This review provides a brief history of structural adjustment, and then presents anthropological analyses of adjustment and public health. The first section reviews studies of health services and the second section examines literature that assesses broader social determinants of health influenced by adjustment.
The dialogue between medical anthropology and epidemiology is important in Tullio Seppilli’s thought. Indeed, the probabilistic mechanisms of a statistical nature make it possible to identify ...significant correlations between risk, health, and power structures. Even considering the recent changes in the Covid-19 syndemic, the text outlines an anthropological approach to health aimed at understanding the generative processes of vulnerabilities and inequalities in contemporary societies.
Seeing bodies and evolutionary histories as quantifiable features that can be measured separately from the human cultural experience is an erroneous approach. Seeing cultural perceptions and the ...human experience as disentangled from biological form and function and evolutionary history is equally misguided. An integrative anthropology moves past dichotomous perspectives and seeks to entangle the “inside” and “outside,” methodologically and theoretically, to move beyond isolationist trends in understanding the human. In this paper I illustrate the underlying rationale for some anthropological lack of engagement with neo-Darwinian approaches and review contemporary evolutionary theory discussing how, in combination with a dynamic approach to human culture, it can facilitate integration in anthropology. Finally, I offer an overview of the human niche concept and propose a heuristic framework as a set of shared assumptions about human systems to help frame a sincerely anthropological and emphatically evolutionary approach to the human experience.
Why do humans heal one another? Evolutionary psychology has advanced our understanding of why humans suffer psychological distress and mental illness. However, to date, the evolutionary origins of ...what drives humans to alleviate the suffering of others has received limited attention. Therefore, we draw upon evolutionary theory to assess why humans psychologically support one another, focusing on the interpersonal regulation of emotions that shapes how humans heal and console one another when in psychosocial distress. To understand why we engage in psychological healing, we review the evolution of cooperation among social species and the roles of emotional contagion, empathy, and self-regulation. We discuss key aspects of human biocultural evolution that have contributed to healing behaviors: symbolic logic including language, complex social networks, and the long period of childhood that necessitates identifying and responding to others in distress. However, both biological and cultural evolution also have led to social context when empathy and consoling are impeded. Ultimately, by understanding the evolutionary processes shaping why humans psychologically do or do not heal one another, we can improve our current approaches in global mental health and uncover new opportunities to improve the treatment of mental illness across cultures and context around the world.
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•Understanding biocultural evolution of psychosocial healing helps improve current practice.•Psychological healing is a component of cooperative processes related to evolutionary fitness.•Social rupture and social repair are features of cooperative social species including humans.•Healing comprises empathy, mirroring, emotional contagion, self-regulation, and mentalizing.•Healing among humans involves symbolic processes requiring shared meanings of symbols.
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