Dissertation: Health Care Seeking in Nicaragua: Researching the Interface Between Economics, Cultural Understanding, and Practical Logic

论文：尼加拉瓜的医疗保健寻求：研究经济学、文化理解和实践逻辑之间的接口

• 批准号: 0130306
• 负责人: Mark Nichter
• 金额: $ 1.2万
• 依托单位: University of Arizona
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2002
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2002-07-01 至 2004-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0130306&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Dissertation; Health; Care; Seeking; Nicaragua

Health and disease are experienced within social contexts. For people living in poverty, health care seeking decisions are made in conjunction with considerations of how to allocate scarce resources to meet the needs of multiple household members. Much of the international health literature has focused on sociocultural factors that impact health care seeking. Yet little research has been conducted on the ways that economic factors directly and indirectly constrain or facilitate health care seeking strategies in poor households. The proposed study will examine how sociocultural factors, economics, and social relations articulate in health care and resource decision-making among poor and lower middle income households in Nicaragua, a country with high rates of child morbidity and mortality as well as high rates of maternal mortality. Utilizing participant observation and semi-structured interviews, the researcher, an anthropology graduate student at the University of Arizona, will prospectively follow fifty rural households in a municipality of the department of Masaya over the course of a year. Ethnographic research is needed in local contexts to assess how multiple factors impacting on health seeking articulate during actual illness episodes. In addition to providing doctoral training for a promising woman scientist, the proposed study will help fill the gap in the paucity of ethnographic research into contemporary health issues for Nicaraguans living in poverty, and assess the cross-cultural applicability of theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of health care seeking.

健康和疾病是在社会背景下经历的。 对于生活贫困的人来说，寻求医疗保健的决定是结合如何分配稀缺资源来满足多个家庭成员的需求的考虑而做出的。 许多国际健康文献都关注影响医疗保健寻求的社会文化因素。然而，对于经济因素如何直接或间接限制或促进贫困家庭的医疗保健寻求策略的研究却很少。 拟议的研究将探讨社会文化因素、经济和社会关系如何影响尼加拉瓜贫困和中低收入家庭的医疗保健和资源决策，尼加拉瓜是一个儿童发病率和死亡率以及孕产妇死亡率都很高的国家。 亚利桑那大学人类学研究生研究员利用参与观察和半结构化访谈，将在一年内跟踪马萨亚省一个市的 50 个农村家庭。 需要在当地背景下进行人种学研究，以评估影响健康寻求的多种因素在实际疾病发作期间如何表达。 除了为有前途的女科学家提供博士培训外，拟议的研究还将有助于填补对生活在贫困中的尼加拉瓜人当代健康问题的人种学研究的空白，并评估医疗保健研究的理论和方法方法的跨文化适用性。