Anthropology professors Peter Benson and Carolyn Sargent will travel to Washington, D.C., Tuesday and Wednesday, Feb. 23 and 24, to speak with U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan of Missouri about the recently convened Healthcare Reform Task Force and new ways to link academic research and policy development.
Benson, Ph.D., assistant professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, and Sargent, Ph.D., professor of anthroplogy and of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, all in Arts & Sciences, organized the Society for Medical Anthropology Healthcare Reform Task Force meeting held at Washington University in St. Louis Feb 1-3. It was sponsored by Gary S. Wihl, Ph.D., dean of the faculty of Arts & Sciences and the Hortense and Tobias Lewin Distinguished Professor in the Humanities.
The meeting included academics from around the country in the fields of anthropology, medicine, social work and public health.
The meeting’s mission and objectives were to develop ways to inform the process of health reform in a nonpartisan manner; explore structured roles for anthropologists in conducting survey research to reveal the human stories that lie beneath health care policy development and mass media coverage; and examine ways for the Society of Medical Anthropologists to provide real time information gathering on issues broadly related to health care as implementation of health-care legislation unfolds.
“Members of the task force are prominent anthropologists and specialists in public health, who are committed to being part of the solution to the national health-care crisis,” said Sargent, outgoing president of the Society for Medical Anthropologists. “As experts in collecting personal and family health histories as well as analyzing social, political and economic factors that place some populations at particular risk of ill health, we hope to bridge the gap between academic research and policy development.
“Ultimately, we also hope to establish a research network of scholars who could investigate questions of concern to policy makers on an as-needed basis,” Sargent said.
The task force will meet again at the national meeting of the American Anthropological Association this fall, where group members will present findings to date.
“What is important about the task force is that it represents a new model for linking social science research and analysis with health-care policy and the legislative process,” Benson said. “And it’s being spearheaded here in the College of Arts & Sciences and sponsored by Dean Wihl.”