New Books In Public Health

A close look at stories of maternal death in Malawi that considers their implications in the broader arena of medical knowledge.By the early twenty-first century, about one woman in twelve could expect to die of a pregnancy or childbirth complication in Malawi. Specific deaths became object lessons. Explanatory stories circulated through hospitals and villages, proliferating among a range of practitioners: nurse-midwives, traditional birth attendants, doctors, epidemiologists, herbalists. Was biology to blame? Economic underdevelopment? Immoral behavior? Tradition? Were the dead themselves at fault?In Partial Stories: Maternal Death from Six Angles (U Chicago Press, 2022), Claire L. Wendland considers these explanations for maternal death, showing how they reflect competing visions of the past and shared concerns about social change. Drawing on extended fieldwork, Wendland reveals how efforts to legitimate a single story as the authoritative version can render care more dangerous than it might otherwise be. Historical, biological, technological, ethical, statistical, and political perspectives on death usually circulate in different expert communities and different bodies of literature. Here, Wendland considers them together, illuminating dilemmas of maternity care in contexts of acute change, chronic scarcity, and endemic inequity within Malawi and beyond.Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. Her book, Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love (Brevis Press) was published in 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Unmasked: Covid, Community, and the Case of Okoboji (Vanderbilt UP, 2022) is the story of what happened in Okoboji, a small Iowan tourist town, when a collective turn from the coronavirus to the economy occurred in the COVID summer of 2020. State political failures, local negotiations among political and public health leaders, and community (dis)belief about the virus resulted in Okoboji being declared a hotspot just before the Independence Day weekend, when an influx of half a million people visit the town.The story is both personal and political. Author Emily Mendenhall, an anthropologist at Georgetown University, is a native of Okoboji, and her family still lives there. As the events unfolded, Mendenhall was in Okoboji, where she spoke formally with over 100 people and observed a community that rejected government guidance and public health knowledge, revealing deep-seated mistrust in outsiders and strong commitments to local thinking. Unmasked is a fascinating and heartbreaking account of where people put their trust, and how isolationist popular beliefs can be in America's small communities.Sharonee Dasgupta is currently a graduate student in the department of anthropology at UMass Amherst. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can a history of cure be more than a history of how disease comes to an end? In 1950s Madras, an international team of researchers demonstrated that antibiotics were effective in treating tuberculosis. But just half a century later, reports out of Mumbai stoked fears about the spread of totally drug-resistant strains of the disease. Had the curable become incurable? Through an anthropological history of tuberculosis treatment in India, Bharat Jayram Venkat examines what it means to be cured, and what it means for a cure to come undone. At the Limits of Cure (Duke UP, 2021) tells a story that stretches from the colonial period—a time of sanatoria, travel cures, and gold therapy—into a postcolonial present marked by antibiotic miracles and their failures. Venkat juxtaposes the unraveling of cure across a variety of sites: in idyllic hill stations and crowded prisons, aboard ships and on the battlefield, and through research trials and clinical encounters. If cure is frequently taken as an ending (of illness, treatment, and suffering more generally), Venkat provides a foundation for imagining cure otherwise in a world of fading antibiotic efficacy. Garima Jaju holds a Ph.D. in international development from Oxford University and is currently a post-doc in sociology at Cambridge University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the United States, systemic racism is embedded in policies and practices, thereby structuring American society to perpetuate inequality and all of the symptoms and results of that inequality. Racial, social, and class inequities and the public health crises in the United States are deeply intertwined, their roots and manifestations continually pressuring each other. This has been both illuminated and exacerbated since 2020, with the Movement for Black Lives (BLM) and the disproportionate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on historically disadvantaged groups within the U.S. Dr. Dayna Bowen Matthew, Dean of the George Washington University Law School, explores and unpacks the public health crisis that is racism in her new book Just Health: Treating Structural Racism to Heal America (NYU Press, 2022). She describes how structural inequality undermines the interests of a thriving nation and the steps we can take to undo the pervasive nature of inequality to create more equitable and just systems.Dr. Bowen Matthew describes her personal relationship with the concepts of structural inequality and racism in the public health system, opening with a heart-wrenching ode to her father’s experience with poverty and prejudice, which ultimately led to his premature death. Through her family’s story, she explains how structural inequality is perpetuated on a large-enough scale and with a powerful-enough scope so as to virtually guarantee social outcomes that reflect predetermined hierarchies based on race and/or class, hierarchies that remain consistent across generations. These disproportionate outcomes are often dismissed as due to comorbidities without the attention paid to social factors are the primary cause of comorbidities, because oppression in its many forms blocks equitable access to the social determinants of health. These social determinants include, but are not limited to, clean and safe housing, adequate education, nutritious food and fresh water, access to recreational spaces, and mental health services. Individuals who lack these, through no fault of their own, are then obligated to accept disproportionate care, illness, and disturbingly shorter life spans then are the norm for many Americans and are much closer to life spans in impoverished countries. Dr. Bowen Matthew presents evidence of discrimination in housing, education, employment, and the criminal justice system, detailing how law has played a central role in erecting disproportionate access to the social determinants of health, and therefore is a requisite tool for dismantling it. She provides a clear path to undoing structural racism and providing an equitable society to all, encouraging health providers, law makers, and citizens all to fight to dismantle the hurdles that many patients face because of the zip code in which they live.Emma R. Handschke assisted in the production of this podcast.Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or tweet to @gorenlj. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the world nears 8 billion people, the countries that have led the global order since World War II are becoming the most aged societies in human history. At the same time, the world's poorest and least powerful countries are suffocating under an imbalance of population and resources. In 8 Billion and Counting, political demographer Jennifer D. Sciubba argues that the story of the twenty-first century is less a story about exponential population growth, as the previous century was, than it is a story about differential growth--marked by a stark divide between the world's richest and poorest countries.Drawing from decades of research, policy experience, and teaching, Sciubba employs stories and statistics to explain how demographic trends, like age structure and ethnic composition, are crucial signposts for future violence and peace, repression and democracy, poverty and prosperity. Although we have a diverse global population, demographic trends often follow predictable patterns that can help professionals across the corporate, nonprofit, government, and military sectors understand the global strategic environment.Through the lenses of national security, global health, and economics, Sciubba demonstrates the pitfalls of taking population numbers at face value and extrapolating from there. Instead, she argues, we must look at the forces in a society that amplify demographic trends and the forces that dilute them, particularly political institutions, or the rules of the game. She shows that the most important skills in demographic analysis are naming and being aware of your preferences, rethinking assumptions, and asking the right questions.Provocative and engrossing, 8 Billion and Counting: How Sex, Death, and Migration Shape Our World (W. W. Norton, 2022) is required reading for business leaders, policy makers, and anyone eager to anticipate political, economic, and social risks and opportunities. A deeper understanding of fertility, mortality, and migration promises to point toward the investments we need to make today to shape the future we want tomorrow.Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Insects are seldom mentioned in discussions surrounding human history, yet they have dramatically impacted today's societies. The Silken Thread: Five Insects and Their Impacts on Human History (Oxford UP, 2021) places them front and center, offering a multidisciplinary view of their significance.Diseases vectored by insects have killed more people than all weapons of war. Fleas are common pests, but some can transmit illnesses such as the bubonic plague. In fact, three pandemics can be traced back to them. Epidemics of typhus have been caused by lice. Conversely, humans have also benefitted from insects for millennia. Silk comes from silkworms and honey comes from bees. Despite the undeniably powerful effects of insects on humans, their stories are typically left out of our history books.In The Silken Thread, entomologists Robert. N. Wiedenmann and J. Ray Fisher link the history of insects to the history of empires, cultural exchanges, and warfare. The book narrows its focus to just five insects: a moth, a flea, a louse, a mosquito, and a bee. The authors explore the impact of these insects throughout time and the common threads connecting them. Using biology to complement history, they showcase these small creatures in a whole new light.On every page, the authors thoughtfully analyze the links between history and entomology. The book begins with silkworms, which have been farmed for centuries. It then moves to fleas and their involvement in the spread of the plague before introducing the role lice played in the Black Death, wars, and immigration. The following section concerns yellow fever mosquitos, emphasizing the effects of yellow fever in the Americas and the connection to sugar and slavery. After discussing the importance of western honey bees, the authors tie these five insects together in an exciting closing chapter.Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Guns hold a complex place in American culture. Over 30,000 Americans die each year from gun violence, and guns are intimately connected to issues of public health, as is evident whenever a mass shooting occurs. But guns also play an important role in many Americans’ lives that is not reducible to violence and death—as tools, sporting equipment, and identity markers. They are also central to debates about constitutional rights, as seen in ongoing discussions about the Second Amendment, and they are a continuous source of legislative concern, as apparent in annual ratings of gun-supporting legislators.Even as guns are wrapped up with other crucial areas of concern, they are also fundamentally a rhetorical concern. Guns and gun violence occupy a unique rhetorical space in the United States, one characterized by silent majorities, like most gun owners; vocal minorities, like the firearm industry and gun lobby; and a stalemate that fails to stem the flood of the dead. How Americans talk, deliberate, and fight about guns is vital to how guns are marketed, used, and regulated. A better understanding of the rhetorics of guns and gun violence can help Americans make better arguments about them in the world. However, where guns are concerned, rhetorical studies is not terribly different from American culture more generally. Guns are ever-present and exercise powerful effects, but they are commonly talked about in oblique, unsystematic ways.Rhetoric and Guns (Utah State UP, 2022) advances more direct, systematic engagement in the field and beyond by analyzing rhetoric about guns, guns in rhetoric, and guns as rhetoric, particularly as they relate to specific instances of guns in culture. The authors attempt to understand rhetoric’s relationship to guns by analyzing rhetoric about guns and how they function in and as rhetoric related to specific instances—in media coverage, political speech, marketing, and advertising. Original chapters from scholars in rhetorical studies, communication, education, and related fields elucidate how rhetoric is used to maintain and challenge the deadly status quo of gun violence in the United States and extend rhetoricians’ sustained interest in the fields’ relationships to violence, brutality, and atrocity.Tom Discenna is Professor of Communication at Oakland University whose work examines issues of academic labor and communicative labor more broadly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A potential crisis in human fertility is brewing. As societies become more affluent, they experience changes that have a dramatic impact on reproduction. As average family sizes fall, the selection pressure for high-fertility genes decreases; exacerbated by the IVF industry which allows infertility-linked genes to pass into the next generation. Male fertility rates are low, for many reasons including genetics and exposure to environmental toxins. So, a perfect storm of factors is contriving to drive fertility rates down at unprecedented rates. If we do not recognize the reality of our situation and react accordingly, an uncontrollable decline in population numbers is likely, which we'll be unable to reverse. R. John Aitken's book The Infertility Trap: Why Life Choices Impact your Fertility and Why We Must Act Now (Cambridge UP, 2022) addresses, in a unique and multi-faceted way, how the consequences of modern life affects fertility, so that we can consider behavioural, social, medical and environmental changes which could reduce the severity of what is about to come.Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A detailed exploration of parents' fight for a safe environment for their kids, interrogating how race, class, and gender shape health advocacy The success of food allergy activism in highlighting the dangers of foodborne allergens shows how illness communities can effectively advocate for the needs of their members. In Food Allergy Advocacy: Parenting and the Politics of Care (U Minnesota Press, 2022), Danya Glabau follows parents and activists as they fight for allergen-free environments, accurate labeling, the fair application of disability law, and access to life-saving medications for food-allergic children in the United States. At the same time, she shows how this activism also reproduces the culturally dominant politics of personhood and responsibility, based on an idealized version of the American family, centered around white, middle-class, and heteronormative motherhood. By holding up the threat of food allergens to the white nuclear family to galvanize political and scientific action, Glabau shows, the movement excludes many, including Black women and disabled adults, whose families and health have too often been marginalized from public health and social safety net programs. Further, its strategies are founded on the assumption that market-based solutions will address issues of social exclusion and equal access to healthcare. Sharing the personal experiences of a wide spectrum of people, including parents, support group leaders, physicians, entrepreneurs, and scientists, Food Allergy Advocacy raises important questions about who controls illness activism. Using critical, intersectional feminism to interrogate how race, class, and gender shape activist priorities and platforms, it shows the way to new, justice-focused models of advocacy.Danya Glabau is a medical anthropologist and science and technology studies scholar who researches patient activism, the political economy of the global pharmaceutical industry, and feminist cybercultures. She is a faculty member at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering and the Director of the Science and Technology Studies Program.Autumn Wilke works in higher education as an ADA coordinator and diversity officer and am also an author and doctoral candidate with research/topics related to disability and higher education. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since 2010 it has been possible to determine a person's genetic makeup in a matter of days at an accessible cost for many millions of people. Along with this technological breakthrough there has emerged a movement to use this information to help prospective parents "eliminate preventable genetic disease." As the prospect of systematically excluding the appearance of unwanted mutations in our children comes within reach, David B. Goldstein examines the possible consequences from these types of choices.Engaging and accessible, The End of Genetics: Designing Humanity's DNA (Yale UP, 2022) is a clarion call for responsible and informed stewardship of the human genome provides an overview of what we do and do not know about human genetics and looks at some of the complex, yet largely unexplored, issues we must be most careful about as we move into an era of increasing numbers of parents exercising direct control over the genomes of their children.Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices