Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Global Development in Policy and Practice: The Polio Eradication Initiative from Atlanta to Rural Pakistan

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The Polio Eradication Initiative, the largest public health project in history, is perhaps on the verge of success. In Pakistan, however, eradication has proved elusive. This study will examine how policymakers around the globe understand and deal with the barriers to eradication in Pakistan. Graduate student, Svea H. Closser, MPH, supervised by Dr. Peter J. Brown, will follow the ideas, policies, and practices of the Polio Eradication Initiative from policymakers outside Pakistan, to government officials and aid groups in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, and then to the recipients of immunization campaigns in rural Pakistan. These are groups of people who rarely, if ever, meet face-to-face, but who are nevertheless linked through the Polio Eradication Initiative. She hypothesizes that it may be the nature of those linkages that underlies the difficulties the campaign has faced in Pakistan. From this perspective, success in eradicating poiowill depend not on laboratory breakthrous by on organization factors, including relations with Pakistani communities. The researcher will observe meetings and conduct interviews at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta and the WHO in Geneva, interview government and aid officials in Pakistan's capital, and, for the final five months of her research, follow a polio team at work in rural Pakistant. Among other goals, the researcher will examine how planners understand and deploy the concepts of "corruption" and "women's status," as aspects of Pakistani culture that are assumed to act as barriers to successful eradication. She will try to determine whether or not they are the barriers that planners believe them to be, or whether other factors are to blame. This research will contribute to scientific understanding of globalization by careful attention to the intermediating flows of people, ideas, and information. It will help to build a nuanced understanding of how global networks like international development institutions function and interact with specific communities. It will help to understand the variables that may explain the success or failure of an historic project at a key moment. Research findings will be shared with polio eradication planners, fostering international collaboration and providing practical information that may assist in the eradication effort.