RAPID: Cultural Models of H1N1

University Of South Florida, Tampa FL

Investigators

Abstract

Dr. Robert D. Baer (University of South Florida)will udnertake research on how the global pandemic of H1N1 influenza is understood in different cultural contexts, in this case, among laypeople and physicians in Mexico and the United States, as well as the responses people consider appropriate to this new illness. In the case of a pandemic, viruses move around the globe, carried by people and dispersed in the course of social interaction. Fears and anxieties, as well as vaccines, are also dispersed around the globe. This study will thus contribute to the anthropological literature on how macro global forces play out in different cultural contexts. The extent to which local interpretations differ may help to understand cultural responses to global patterns. Epidemics provide the opportunity to investigate how people use cultural knowledge to react to new kinds of social experiences; the new illness is interpreted in terms of the ethnomedical beliefs of the cultural group. As such, the project will explore how aspects of culture affect the impact of global forces. This study is a cross-cultural comparative study describing the explanatory models of H1N1 among laypeople and physicians in the US and Mexico, comparing and contrasting individual and cultural themes in the models. The researcher will employ a two-step process for data collection. The first step uses qualitative, open-ended interviews to collect descriptive information on explanatory models of H1N1 in the US and Mexico. In the second step, themes from the descriptive interviews will be used to develop a structured interview, so that detailed comparisons can be made between laypeople and physicians, and across individuals, social classes, and cultural settings. In addition to contributing to social scientific theory, the data from this study will be useful in our improving our understanding of how laypeople and physicians interpret H1N1 and its vaccine. Such information may be of great value in public health programs both in Mexico and the United States.