Dissertation Research: Child Illness in Rural Laos: CulturalPerceptions, Caregiver Response and Implications for Child Survival

该项目支持亚利桑那大学人类学专业的一名学生的学位论文研究。这名学生将在老挝学习婴幼儿疾病，老挝是世界上最不发达的国家之一。这项研究将使用民族志方法来记录老挝农村的照顾者区分、分类、诊断和选择儿童疾病治疗方法的社会文化和经济背景，并仔细注意季节变化。此外，学生还将学习非正式和正式的医疗提供者，包括供应商、药剂师、非专业治疗师和公共卫生工作者如何解释照顾者提出的疾病术语和类别。方法包括在老挝一个农村进行为期14个月的参与者观察，包括家庭调查，对照顾者的小样本的半结构化和结构化访谈，对50名照顾者的随机抽样的额外访谈，对出售药品和提供建议的药店和村庄市场商店的正式研究，以及对公立和私立诊所和医院的使用者的访谈。目前，几乎没有关于老挝人健康行为的定性研究。这个项目将促进我们对不发达社会中的穷人如何寻找和解释他们可以用来治疗幼儿疾病的信息的理解。这一新知识将对类似欠发达社会的卫生官员在准备提供医疗保健的计划时具有价值。该项目还将增进我们对世界这一重要区域的了解。

This project supports the dissertation research of an anthropology student from the University of Arizona. The student will study infant and child illness in Laos, one of the least developed countries in the world. The research will use ethnographic methods to document the socio-cultural and economic contexts in which caregivers in rural Laos distinguish, categorize, diagnose, and select treatments for childhood illnesses, paying careful attention to seasonal variation. In addition the student will study how informal and formal health providers, including vendors, pharmacists, lay healers and public health workers interpret the illness terms and categories presented by caregivers. Methods include participant-observation in a Laotian rural village over 14 months including a household survey, semi-structured as well as structured interviews with small samples of caregivers, additional interviews with a random sample of 50 caregivers, a formal study of drug stores and village market shops selling medicine and providing advice, and interviews with users of public and private clinics and hospitals.At present there are almost no qualitative studies of Laotian health behavior. This project will advance our understanding of how poor people in an underdeveloped society seek out and interpret the information available to them to treat illness in young children. This new knowledge will be valuable to health officials in similar less-developed societies in preparing programs to provide care. The project will also advance our understanding of this important region of the world.