Article Text
Abstract
Recent outbreaks of Ebola virus disease (2013–2016) and Zika virus (2015–2016) bring renewed recognition of the need to understand social pathways of disease transmission and barriers to care. Social scientists, anthropologists in particular, have been recognised as important players in disease outbreak response because of their ability to assess social, economic and political factors in local contexts. However, in emergency public health response, as with any interdisciplinary setting, different professions may disagree over methods, ethics and the nature of evidence itself. A disease outbreak is no place to begin to negotiate disciplinary differences. Given increasing demand for anthropologists to work alongside epidemiologists, clinicians and public health professionals in health crises, this paper gives a basic introduction to anthropological methods and seeks to bridge the gap in disciplinary expectations within emergencies. It asks: ‘What can anthropologists do in a public health crisis and how do they do it?’ It argues for an interdisciplinary conception of emergency and the recognition that social, psychological and institutional factors influence all aspects of care.
- public health
- health systems
- qualitative study
- viral haemorrhagic fevers
- other infection, disease, disorder, or injury
This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
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Footnotes
Handling editor Seye Abimbola
Contributors Concept: DS, IB, JB, PdC, BS. Literature search: IB. Writing first draft: DS, IB. Writing subsequent drafts: DS, IB, JB, PdC, BS. Administration: DS, IB. Supervision/coordination: DS, BS.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests JB is director of a consultancy specialised in the applied anthropology of global health.
Patient consent Not required.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.