Doctoral Dissertation Research: Vulnerability and Health: Economic Development in Ugandan Pastoralist Communitites

在撒哈拉以南非洲，实现千年发展目标、改善获得饮用水的机会、减少胃肠道疾病和其他发展战略的努力已经并将继续涉及环境资源和服务的私有化。在1980年代后期，乌干达西南部的牧民社区由于私有化和旨在促进经济发展的保护政策，获得土地和水的机会急剧减少。使用最初在自然灾害和脆弱性的社会建构研究中提出的框架，乌干达的两项土地私有化和保护政策可能被认为是“政治风险”。这些灾害可能通过影响获取资源的途径或改变牧民社区的应对策略，改变了社会和生物物理脆弱性的各个方面。这个项目的最终目标是了解土地私有化和保护做法对经历这些发展项目的社区的健康和脆弱性的影响。通过收集传染病发病率数据和人口统计数据，以及进行半结构化访谈，可以促进对健康和疾病发病率和动态的了解。由此产生的认识使具体的经济发展政策和脆弱性之间的联系变得模糊，这可能导致传染病风险的增加，表现为疾病发病率的增加。该项目的具体目的是：1)检验高脆弱性与传染病发病率增加相关的假设；2)检验政治风险之前的高脆弱性与政治风险之后的高脆弱性相关的假设；3)识别社会和生物物理脆弱性的自我感知根源；4)探索脆弱和健康的不协调实例。该框架扩大了医学地理学的范围，在获取资源和权力动态的背景下包括健康、脆弱性和环境。拟议的研究将有助于理解各种尺度之间的潜在联系，从国家经济发展政策和跨国意识形态到社区内不同的健康结果。此外，本研究将对脆弱性科学做出重要贡献，创建一个测试脆弱性指数。由此产生的脆弱性与健康之间的联系可能需要新的发展轨迹，促进平等和赋予人们权力，使他们能够利用现有的物质和社会资源来减少脆弱性，并持续改善他们的生活质量和健康。审查使人和地方易受伤害的因素可以指导公共政策的制定，改进目前为增加获得安全饮用水的机会、减少与环境感染有关的死亡率和实现千年发展目标所作的努力，同时对推动通过私有化和个人主义实现这些目标也有影响。该奖项由美国国家科学基金会国际科学与工程办公室共同资助。

In sub-Saharan Africa, efforts to meet the Millenuim Development Goals (MDGs), improve access to drinking water, reduce gastrointestinal illness, and other development strategies have and continue to involve the privatization of environmental resources and services. In the late 1980s, southwestern Ugandan pastoralist communities experienced dramatic decreases in access to land and water through privatization and conservation policies aimed at promoting economic development. Using the frameworks that were originally proposed within research on natural hazards and the social construction of vulnerability, the two Ugandan policies of land privatization and conservation may be considered to be 'political hazards.' These hazards may have altered aspects of social and biophysical vulnerability by impacting access to resources or altering coping strategies in the pastoralist communities. The ultimate goal of this project is to understand the implications of land privatization and conservation practices for health and vulnerability in the communities experiencing these development projects. By collecting infectious disease incidence data and demographic data, and by conducting semi-structured interviews, an understanding of the incidence and dynamics of health and disease may be fostered. The resulting understanding faculitates the connections of specific economic development policies and vulnerability, which may result in an increased risk of infectious disease, expressed as an increased disease incidence rate. The specific aims of this project are to: 1) Test the hypothesis that higher vulnerability is associated with increased infectious disease incidence; 2) Test the hypothesis that high vulnerability preceding the political hazards is associated with high vulnerability after these hazards; 3) Identify the self-perceived root causes of social and biophysical vulnerability; and 4) Explore discordant instances of vulnerability and health.This framework broadens the scope of medical geography to include health, vulnerability and the environment in the context of access to resources and power dynamics. The proposed research will contribute to understanding the potential connections between scales, from national economic development policies and transnational ideologies to diverse health outcomes within communities. In addition, this research will be an important contribution to the science of vulnerability, testing the creation of a vulnerability index. The resulting connections between vulnerability and health may call for new trajectories for development, which facilitate equality and empowerment of people to use available material and social resources to lessen vulnerability and bring sustained improvement in the quality and health of their lives. Examination of the factors that make people and places vulnerable can guide public policy development and improve current efforts to increase access to safe drinking water, reduce mortality associated with environmental infections, and meet the MDGs, while bearing implications for the push to meet those goals through privatization and individualism.This award is co-funded by NSF's Office of International Science and Engineering.