TY - JOUR
T1 - Getting to Education to Get to Health
T2 - A Culture of Health Intervention in Orange, New Jersey
AU - McCaffrey, Katherine T.
AU - Fullilove, Mindy Thomson
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 by the American Anthropological Association
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - In this essay, we tackle the challenge of adapting the dominant way we think about health in the United States—through an individualistic, technocratic, biomedical lens—to address social problems rooted in structural inequality. As scholar activists, the authors participated in a coalition effort to improve community health in a postindustrial New Jersey city. Adopting a social determinants of health perspective, we describe efforts to move discourse away from wellness and toward a deeper understanding of the role of education and learning in building a "culture of health." The essay discusses how this structural analysis of health competed with much more narrow cultural understandings of education and health rooted in a pervasive wellness ideology. Coalition success hinged on correctly identifying the obstacles to health and learning in the community as understood by community members: violence emerged as a pressing obstacle that impeded both learning and health. Once we clarified a shared understanding of health as learning and a common understanding of violence as the most immediate obstacle to health as learning—our coalition was energized and made progress.
AB - In this essay, we tackle the challenge of adapting the dominant way we think about health in the United States—through an individualistic, technocratic, biomedical lens—to address social problems rooted in structural inequality. As scholar activists, the authors participated in a coalition effort to improve community health in a postindustrial New Jersey city. Adopting a social determinants of health perspective, we describe efforts to move discourse away from wellness and toward a deeper understanding of the role of education and learning in building a "culture of health." The essay discusses how this structural analysis of health competed with much more narrow cultural understandings of education and health rooted in a pervasive wellness ideology. Coalition success hinged on correctly identifying the obstacles to health and learning in the community as understood by community members: violence emerged as a pressing obstacle that impeded both learning and health. Once we clarified a shared understanding of health as learning and a common understanding of violence as the most immediate obstacle to health as learning—our coalition was energized and made progress.
KW - community organizing
KW - participatory action research
KW - social determinants of health
KW - wellness
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85107451731&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/napa.12155
DO - 10.1111/napa.12155
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85107451731
SN - 2153-957X
VL - 45
SP - 39
EP - 56
JO - Annals of Anthropological Practice
JF - Annals of Anthropological Practice
IS - 1
ER -