[Scholar Series - Ep. #51] "Where They Need Me: Local Clinicians and the Workings of Global Health in Haiti." A Conversation with Dr. Pierre Minn

In this episode, Anthropologist Dr. Pierre Minn takes a deep dive into examining the work of Haitian health professionals in humanitarian aid encounters. Did you know that Haiti is the target of an overwhelming number of internationally funded health projects? While religious institutions sponsor a number of these initiatives, many are implemented within the secular framework of global health. Dr. Minn illustrates the divergent criteria that actors involved in global health use to evaluate interventions' efficacy. Haitian physicians, nurses, and administrative staff are hired to carry out these global health programs, distribute or withhold resources, and produce accounts of interventions' outcomes. In their roles as intermediaries, Haitian clinicians are expected not only to embody the humanitarian projects of foreign funders and care for their impoverished patients but also to act as sources of support for their own kin networks, while negotiating their future prospects in a climate of pronounced scarcity and insecurity. In Where They Need Me, you'll hear Dr. Minn countering simplistic depictions of clinicians and patients as heroes, villains, or victims as well as move beyond the donor-recipient dyad that has dominated theoretical work on humanitarianism and the gift.