5.0. Conclusion
Anthropology brings a useful suite of tools and concepts to urban health research. Mixed-methods approaches can embrace both objective and more subjective ways of understanding human adaptation to and variation within the urban context. There have been many productive interactions among anthropologists and various disciplines studying health over the course of the 20th century and into the 21st. At the beginning of the 21st century, we are poised to enhance our ability to understand urban health contexts through effective collaboration among anthropologists and other disciplines studying urban health.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Acevedo-Garcia, D. (2000). Residential segregation and the epidemiology of infectious diseases. Soc. Sci. Med. 51:1143–1161.
Aday, L. A. (2001). At risk in America. Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco.
Adler, S. R. (2001). Intergrating personal health belief systems: Patient-practitioner communication. In: Brady, E. (ed.), Healing logics: culture and medicine in modern health belief systems. Utah State University Press, Logan, UT, pp. 115–128.
Bach, J. F. (2002). The Effect of Infections on Susceptibility to Autoimmune and Allergic Diseases. N. Engl. J. Med. 347:911–920.
Bailey, E. J. (2000). Medical anthropology and African American health. Bergin & Garvey, CT.
Bamshad, M. J., and Olson, S. E. (2003). Does race exist? Sci. Am. 289(6):78–85.
Barg, F. K., Murray, G. M., Huss-Ashmore, R. A., Bogner, H., Wittink, M., and Gallo, J. J. (2004). Using mixed methods to understand depression in older adults. Journals of Gerontol: Social Sciences. In press.
Bell, D., and Valentine, G. (1997). Consuming geographies: we are where we eat. Routledge, London.
Berkman, L. F., and Clark, C. (2003). Neighborhoods and networks: The construction of safe places and bridges. In: Kawachi, I. and Berkman, L.F. (eds.), Neighborhoods and health. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 288–302.
Bhopal, R., and Donaldson, L. (1998). White, European, Western, Caucasian, or What? Inappropriate labeling in research on race, ethnicity and health. Am. J. Public Health 88:1303–1307.
Bogner, H. R., Wittink, M., Merz, J. F., Straton, J., Cronholm, P., Rabins, P., and Gallo, J. J. (2004). Personal characteristics of older primary care patients who provide a buccal swab for APOE testing and banking of genetic material: The Spectrum study. In press.
Borkan, J. M. (2004). Mixed methods studies: A foundation for primary care research. Ann. Fam. Med. 2:4–6.
Bourgois, P. (2003). In search of respect: Selling crack in el barrio. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Braun-Fahrlander, C., Riedler, J., Herz, U., Eder, W., Waser, M., Grize, L., Maisch, S., Carr, D., Gerlach, F., Bufe, A., Lauener, R. P., Schierl, R., Renz, H., Nowak, D., and von Mutius, E. (2002). Environmental exposure to Endotoxin and its relation to asthma in school-age children. N. Engl. J. Med. 347:869–877.
Brett, J. A., Heimendinger, J., Boender, C., Morin, C., and Marshall, J. A. (2002). Using ethnography to improve intervention design. Am. J. Health Promot. 16:331–340.
Burchard, E. G., Ziv, E., Coyle, N., Gomez, S. L., Tang, H., Karter, A. J., Mountain, J. L., Pérez-Stable, E. J., Sheppard, D., and Risch, N. (2003). The importance of race and ethnic background in biomedical research and clinical practice. N. Engl. J. Med. 348:1170–1175.
Campbell, B. G., and Loy, J. D. (2000). Humankind emerging. Allyn and Bacon, Boston.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2003). Self-reported concern about food security associated with obesity — Washington, 1995–1999. MMWR. 52:840–842.
Chang, H. C., and Hermann, E. R. (1974). Acoustical study of a rapid transit system. AIHA. J. 35:640–653.
Chapman, R. R. (2003). Endangering safe motherhood in Mozambique: prenatal care as pregnancy risk. Soc. Sci. Med. 57:355–374.
Cooper, R. (2000). A note on the biological concept of race and its application in epidemiologic research. In: LaVeist, T. (ed.), Race, Ethnicity, and Health. Jossey Bass, San Francisco, pp. 99–114
Creswell, J. W. (1995). Research design: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. Sage Publications, Inc., CA.
Creswell, J. W., Clark, V. L. P., Gutmann, M. L., and Hanson, W. E. (2003). Advanced mixed methods research designs. In: Tashakkori, A, and Teddlie C. (eds.). Handbook of mixed methods in social and behavioral research. Sage Publications, Inc., CA, pp. 209–240.
DiGiacomo, S. (1999). Can there be a cultural epidemiology? Med. Anthropol. Q. 13:436–483.
Dressler, W. (1999). Modernization, stress, and blood pressure. Hum. Biol. 71(4):583–605.
Dressler, W. W., and Bindon, J. R. (2000). The health consequences of cultural consonance: Cultural dimensions of lifestyle, social support, and arterial blood pressure in an African American community. Am. Anthropol. 102:244–260.
Drewnowski, A. (1999). Fat and sugar in the global diet: dietary diversity in the nutrition transition. In: Grew, R. (ed.), Food in global history. Westview Press, Colorado, pp. 194–206.
Epstein, P. R., and Rogers, C. (2004). Inside the greenhouse: The impacts of CO2 and climate change on public health in the inner city. Center for health and the global environment, Harvard Medical School, MA.
Evans, G. W. (2003). The built environment and mental health. J. Urban Health 80:536–555.
Fidell, S. (1978). Nationwide urban noise survey. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 64:198–215.
Fullilove, M. T. (1998). Comment: Abandoning “race” as a variable in public health research — An idea whose time has come. Am. J. Public Health 88:1297–1298.
Fullilove, M. T. (2001). Root shock: the consequences of African American dispossession. J. Urban Health 78:72–80.
Gallo, J. J., Bogner, H. R., Straton, J. B., Margo, K., Lesho, P., Rabins, P. V., and Ford, D. E. (2004). Patient characteristics associated with participation in a practice-based study of depression in late life: The Spectrum study. Int. J. Gen. Psychiatry In press.
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Doubleday, New York.
Goldman, R., Hunt, M. K., Allen, J. D., Hauser, S., Emmons, K., Maeda, M., and Sorenson, G. (2003). The life history interview method: applications to intervention development. Health Educ. Behav. 30:564–581.
Goldman, R. E., and Risica, P. M. (2004). Perceptions of breast and cervical cancer risk and screening among Dominicans and Puerto Ricans in Rhode Island. Ethn. Dis. 14:32–42.
Gomez-Beloz, A., and Chavez, N. (2001). The botanica as a culturally appropriate health care option for Latinos. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 7:537–546.
Higgins, P. G., and Learn, C. D. (1999). Health practices of adult Hispanic women. J. Adv. Nurs. 29:1105–1112.
Hohmann, A. A. (2002). Community based intervention research: Coping with the “noise” of real life in study design. Am. J. Psychiatry 159:201–207.
Huss-Ashmore, R., and Behrman, C. (1999). Transitional environments: health and the perception of permanence in urban micro-environments. In: Schell, L.M., and Ulijaszek, S.J. (eds.), Urbanism, Health and Human Biology in Industrialized Countries. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 67–84.
Inhorn, M. C., and Buss, K. A. (1994). Ethnography, epidemiology and infertility in Egypt. Soc. Sci. Med. 39:671–666.
Johnston, F. E. (1993). The urban disadvantage in the developing world and the physical and mental growth of children. In: Schell, L.M., Smith, M.T., and Bilsborough, A. (eds.), Urban ecology and health in the Third World. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 26–37.
Johnston, F. E., and Gordon-Larsen, P. (1999). Poverty, nutrition, and obesity in the USA. In: Schell, L.M., and Ulijaszek, S.J. (eds.), Urbanism, health, and human biology in industrialised countries. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 192–209.
Kai, J., and Drinkwater, C. (2004). Primary care in disadvantaged communities. Radcliffe Medical Press, United Kingdom.
Kane, S., and Mason, T. (2001). AIDS and criminal justice. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 30:457–479.
Kauffman, K. S. (1995). Center as haven: Findings of an urban ethnography. Nurs. Res. 44:231–236.
Kleinman, A. (1980). Patients and healers in the context of culture: An exploration of the borderland between anthropology, medicine, and psychiatry. University of California Press, California.
Knauss, D. (2002). Noise mapping and annoyance. Noise Health 4:7–11.
Lambert, H., and McKevitt, C. (2002). Anthropology in health research: from qualitative methods to multidisciplinarity. BMJ. 325:210–213.
Larson, A., Bell, M., and Young, A. F. (2004). Clarifying the relationships between health and residential mobility. Soc. Sci. Med. 59:2149–2160.
LaVeist, T. A., and Wallace, J. M. Jr. (2000). Health risk and inequitable distribution of liquor stores in African American neighborhood. Soc. Sci. Med. 51:613–617.
Lewontin, R. C. (1972). The apportionment of human diversity. Evol Bio. 6:381–389.
Link, B. G., Northridge, M. E., Phelan, J. C., and Ganz, M. L. (1998). Social epidemiology and the fundamental cause concept: on the structuring of effective cancer screens by socioeconomic status. Milbank Q. 76:375–402.
Litt, J. S., and Burke, T. A. (2002). Uncovering the historic environmental hazards of urban brownfields. J. Urban Health 79:464–481.
Martin, E. (1984). Primary care in two cultures. J. R. Soc. Med. 77:379–383.
Matheson, M. P., Stansfeld, S. A., and Haines, M. M. (2003). The effects of chronic aircraft noise exposure on children’s cognition and health: 3 field studies. Noise Health 5:31–40.
Miranda, J., Nakamura, R., and Bernal, G. (2003). Including ethnic minorities in mental health intervention research: A practical approach to a long standing problem. Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry 27:467–486.
Monaghan, L. F. (2002). Opportunity, pleasure, and risk-An ethnography of urban male heterosexualities. J. Contemp. Ethnogr. 31:440–477.
Morland, K., Wing, S., Diez Roux, A., and Poole, C. (2002). Neighborhood characteristics associated with the location of food stores and food service places. Am. J. Prev. Med. 22:23–29.
Murray, C. J. L., Gakidou, E. E., and Frenk, J. (1999). Health inequalities and social group differences: what should we measure? Bull. World Health Organ. 77:537–543.
Nguyen, V.K., and Peschard, K. (2003). Anthropology, inequality, and disease: A review. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 32:447–474.
Obrist, B. (2003). Urban health in daily practice: livelihood, vulnerability and resilience in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Anthropology & Medicine 10:275–290.
Obrist, B., Tanner, M., and Harpham, T. (2003a). Engaging anthropology in urban health research: issues and prospects. Anthropology & Medicine 10:362–371.
Obrist, B., van Eeuwijk, P., and Weiss, M. G. (2003b). Health anthropology and urban health research. Anthropology & Medicine 10:267–274.
Osborne, N. G., and Feit, M. D. (1992). The use of race in medical research. JAMA. 267:275–279.
Owens, K. and King, M. C. (1999). Genomic views of human history. Science 286:451–453.
Pachter, L. M., Sumner, T., Fontan, A., Sneed, M., and Bernstein, B. A. (1998). Home-based therapies for the common cold among European American and ethnic minority families: the interface between alternative/complementary and folk medicine. Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine 152:1083–1088.
Panel on DHHS Collection of Race and Ethnicity Data. (2004). Eliminating Health Disparities: Measurement and Data Needs. National Academies Press, Washington, D.C.
Panel on ethnic and racial disparities in medical care convened by Physicians for Human Rights. (2003). The right to equal treatment: An action plan to end racial and ethnic disparities in clinical diagnosis and treatment in the United States. Boston, MA.
Parkar, S. R., Fernandes, J., and Weiss, M. G. (2003). Contextualizing mental health: gendered experiences in a Mumbai slum. Anthropology & Medicine 10:291–308.
Plotkin, S. R., and Post, R. (1999). Folk remedy use in the inner city. South Med. J. 92:795–798.
Pollard, T. M. (1999). Urbanism and psychosocial stress. In: Schell, L.M. and Ulijaszek, S.J. (eds.), Urbanism, Health and Human Biology in Industrialised Countries. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 231–2249.
Ramirez, A. G. (2003). Consumer-provider communication research with special populations. Patient. Educ. Couns. 50:51–54.
Satterthwaite, D. (2000). Will most people live in cities? BMJ. 321:1143–1145.
Schell, L. (1997). Culture as a stressor: A revised model of biocultural interaction. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 102:67–77.
Schell, L. M., and Denham, M. (2003). Environmental pollution in urban environments and human biology. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 32:111–134.
Schell, L. M., and Stark, A. D. (1989). Biomedical anthropology in a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional research project: the Albany lead study. Med. Anthropol. Q. 3:385–394.
Schell, L. M., and Ulijaszek, S. J. (1999). Urbanism, urbanisation, health and human biology: an introduction. In: Schell, L.M. and Ulijaszek, S.J. (eds.), Urbanism, Health, and Human Biology in Industrialised Countries. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 3–20.
Schensul, S. L., Schensul, J. J., and LeCompte, M. D. (1999). Essential Ethnographic Methods. Alta Mira Press, California.
Sloane, D. C., Diamant, A. L., Lewis, L. B., Yancey, A. K., Flynn, G., Nascimento, L. M., McCarthy, W. J., Guinyard, J. J., Cousineau, M. R., and for the REACH Coalition of the African American Building a Legacy of Health Project. (2003). Improving the nutritional resource environment for healthy living through community-based participatory research. J. Gen. Intern. Med. 18:568–575.
Sobal, J. (1999). Food system globalization, eating transformations, and nutrition transitions. In: Grew, R (ed.), Food in global history. Westview Press, Colorado, pp. 171–193.
Tashakkori, A., and Teddlie, C. (1998). Mixed Methodology. Sage Publications, Inc., California.
Thompson, S. J. and Gifford, S. M. (2000). Trying to keep a balance: The meaning of health and diabetes in an urban Aboriginal community. Soc. Sci. Med. 51:1457–1472.
Tobias, A., Diaz, J., Saez, M., and Alberdi, J. C. (2001). Use of poisson regression and box-jenkins models to evaluate the short-term effects of environmental noise levels on daily emergency admissions in Madrid. Eur. J. Epidemiol. 17:765–71.
Trostle, J. A., and Sommerfeld, J. (1996). Medical anthropology and epidemiology. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 25:253–274.
Ulijaszek, S. J. (1999). Physical activity, lifestyle and health of urban populations. In Schell, L.M. and Uliaszek S.J. (eds.), Urbansim, Health and Human Biology in Industrialised Countries. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 250–279.
van Eeuwijk, P. (2003). Urban elderly with chronic illness: local understandings and emerging discrepancies in North Sulawesi, Indonesia. Anthropology & Medicine. 10:325–341.
Vlahov, D., and Galea, S. (2002). Urbanization, urbanicity, and health. J. Urban Health 79:S1–S12.
Wacquant, L. J. D. (2004). Body & Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Weiss, M. G. (2001). Cultural epidemiology: an introduction and overview. Anthropology & Medicine 8:5–29.
Weiss, S. T. (2002). Eat dirt — The hygiene hypothesis and allergic diseases. N. Engl. J. Med. 347:930–931.
Wiebel, W. W. (1988). Combining ethnographic and epidemiologic methods in targeted AIDS interventions: the Chicago model. NIDA. Res. Monogr. 80:137–150.
Wind, S., Van Sickle, D., and Wright, A. L. (2004). Health, place and childhood asthma in southwest Alaska. Soc. Sci. Med. 58:75–88.
Wright, R. J., and Fischer, E. B. (2003). Putting asthma into context: Community influences on risk, behavior, and interventions. In: Kawachi, I., and Berkman, L.F. (eds.), Neighborhoods and Health. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 233–264.
Wylie, J. L., and Wagenfeld-Heintz, E. (2004). Development of relationship-centered care. Journal of Healthcare Quality 26:14–21.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2005 Springer Science+ Business Media, Inc.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Barg, F.K., Kauer, J. (2005). An Anthropological Perspective on Urban Health. In: Galea, S., Vlahov, D. (eds) Handbook of Urban Health. Springer, Boston, MA . https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-25822-1_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-25822-1_13
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-23994-1
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-25822-5
eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)