Medical Anthropology The Future is Now Mark Nichter SFAA/SMA 2006

Charge  Careers for the future : 8 examples of employment opportunities we need to pursue –vigorously  Building MASA : becoming a proactive community of practice

Careers Eight opportunities medical anthropologists need to pursue

Teaching: Beyond the academy  Medical anthropology needs to become a core subject :not just in medical and nursing schools, and schools of public health  Schools of Complementary and Alternative Medicine  Schools training health techs, attendants, and auxiliary care providers  Down to junior college level etc.

Translational Research  Anthropologists need to be involved in translating scientific information to the public and evaluating how the public understands vital information they are exposed to (example: risk)  Public sector  Private sector  News / media

Tracking information flow  Anthropologists need to invent jobs in the information dissemination and tracking field  We need to engage “distributed networks” –What sources of information are people accessing and how are they using it –What information is deemed credible and to whom

Monitoring and evaluation  Anthropologists should know how to conduct outcome and process evaluations for employment and to be better critics Example of growth area  Planned behavior change: All behavior change interventions should have anthropologists monitoring why programs work and do not work in real time

Consumer behavior  Anthropologists need to forge new careers in the interface between consumer behavior, marketing practices, and health outcomes –GIS methods will be crucial for community level assessment –Monitoring of some behaviors may require hybrid training:  example: over the counter self medication – anthropologists with some knowledge of pharmacy

Clinical Trials  Anthropologists need to create jobs for themselves monitoring how clinical trials are actually being implemented  Ethics need to be engaged proactively from informed consent procedures to participant expectations and behavior change during trials –Informed consent needs to be seen as a process, not a one point in time “signing” of a legal document protecting those that conduct trials more than subjects –This is in the best interests of those committing serious funds to high cost trials

Occupational health  Anthropologists need to create an niche for themselves in occupational health investigating such things as  Working conditions : physical and the psychosocial  Work cultures: behavioral patterns associated with work sites  Effect of shift work,  Food /drug consumption  Sleep patterns

Health and health care transition  Anthropologists need to become more involved in the design and ongoing evaluation of health care programs for the aged  This population is growing in size and political importance –Different segments of this population will have different social as well as medical needs, and these needs are changing

Can MASA Become a community of practice

Reflection points  Why should graduate students bother to interact: why is this form of social capital important  What tangible incentives are there for interacting  Comrade and support are important, but not sufficient  How about trading resources :what resources

MASA needs to reflect on past experience  SMA web site and Hnet was set up to facilitate exchange – asses what exchange occurred  Experience: – many people are eating available resources on the website – few people are contributing resources or cooking = why – what is it that could be shared that is non threatening and could get you symbolic capital –MASA figure this out

Big idea  Create practice based networks  Similar grad student research projects conducted in different places with a common method base  Create big N study with lots of small N grad student projects (thesis and dissertations)  Compare different populations across space and time  Sell idea to funders like NSF

Networks and rapid response  Create network of students working in a common subject area  Events occur and AAA/SMA needs rapid response to gain visibility  Experts are asked –student networks could provide spokespeople in SMA with their observations from around the country and the world

You want in the game: get in the game