Winter Quarter

Course: ANTH 215 Introduction to Medical Anthropology and Global Health 

This class, paired with SPH 380, was a great introduction to how factors outside of genetics, namely culture, environment, and politics, influence the health of populations and individuals. I had to reflect on how my own culture and identities influence what "sickness" means to me, how systemic racism and oppression plays a crucial role in who has good health, and the ways the world must reform its global health practices in order to see an improvement in health outcomes looking forward. A recurring theme was that certain groups in the U.S. are disproportionately affected by health issues they contribute the least to, whether it be climate change or hunger. They suffer from lack of access to healthcare, nutritional diets, and other basic human rights. I demonstrate just some of the factors that affect health in my drawing to the left, which I submitted for Creative Assignment #2. Here is the description that accompanies it: 

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"In her 2009 Ted Talk, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warns about the danger of a single story. A single story not only strips people of their dignity but also accentuates differences among individuals rather than their similarities (Adichie, 2009). It paints an incomplete picture of the situation and reinforces harmful stereotypes. In my illustration, I depict the concept of health as a victim of a single story. This narrative suggests that health is binary – one is either healthy or sick – and that maintaining health is solely an individual’s responsibility. If one is ill, American society often places blame on that individual and expects them to ensure their own recovery without accounting for extenuating circumstances. In reality, health is not a single story, but akin to a puzzle influenced by many inequalities. To represent this concept, I drew a coughing woman, composed of multiple puzzle pieces. Each piece is labelled with a different factor that could affect the woman’s health status. This illustration is designed to be easily understood by a student who hasn’t studied medical anthropology. At first glance, some of these factors, like race and gender, are not health inequalities themselves. However, they can induce such inequalities through social constructs like racism and sexism. I have also included some more obvious inequalities, such as access to healthcare or food security, implying that a wide array of structural factors beyond an individual’s control can converge and complicate the maintenance of good health. To say that this woman fell ill due to her own shortcomings would be an incomplete story, as Adichie suggests. It would overlook all the social, political, economic, cultural, and biological reasons why she might have fallen ill. Therefore, it is imperative for anthropologists and healthcare providers to consider all the puzzle pieces that impact an individual’s health, enabling them to tackle as many barriers to treatment and health as possible."

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