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

本项目支持亚利桑那大学一名人类学学生的论文研究。该学生将学习老挝的婴儿和儿童疾病，老挝是世界上最不发达的国家之一。该研究将使用人种学方法记录老挝农村护理人员区分、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，学生将学习非正式和正式的卫生服务提供者，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护理人员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，对小样本护理人员进行半结构化和结构化访谈，对随机抽样的50名护理人员进行额外访谈，对药店和销售药品和提供咨询的乡村市场商店进行正式研究，以及对公立和私立诊所和医院的用户进行访谈。目前几乎没有对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的穷人如何寻找和解释他们可以获得的信息来治疗幼儿疾病的理解。这一新知识将对类似欠发达社会的卫生官员在准备提供护理的计划时很有价值。该项目还将促进我们对世界上这一重要地区的了解。

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.