Doctoral Dissertation Research: Medical Neutrality as a Strategy for Health Care Delivery in Conflict Zones

在武装冲突期间，医疗中立一直是一种关于医疗保健不干预的有影响力的原则。越来越多的科学家和卫生保健专业人员质疑，在冲突持续且悬而未决的情况下，或者在具有巨大社会经济、文化或政治差异的情况下，其原则是否可以被从业者战略性地用作改善卫生保健提供的一种方法。该项目培训一名研究生如何进行严谨、有科学依据的实地考察，探讨如何在冲突地区以及在处于社会边缘地位的个人之间改善保健服务的提供。该项目探讨了如何将医疗中立作为一种伦理原则，在冲突中提供医疗保健。这项研究在以色列进行，重点是巴勒斯坦医生，他们占在以色列工作的医生的12%。这位研究人员询问，声称的中立和专业知识如何允许巴勒斯坦医生获得合法性和对以色列的归属感。该项目是在2013年在巴勒斯坦医学生、医生和管理人员中进行的试点研究之后进行的。这项为期12个月的产品将涉及四个地点的人种学实地工作，使用一系列归纳数据收集技术，包括参与者观察、访谈、临床环境人种学以及档案媒体研究和分析。该项目将为医学人类学做出重要贡献。重要的是，该项目将探讨专业科学和技术知识如何在政治和社会进程中发挥作用，以及这种专门知识如何为边缘化人口的个人创造机会。除了为人类学研究生的培训提供资金外，该项目还将提高人们对如何在冲突地区提供保健服务的理解。

Medical neutrality has been an influential doctrine about the noninterference of health care during periods of armed conflict. Increasingly, scientists and health care professionals have asked whether its principles can be used strategically by practitioners as a method of improving health care delivery in situations where conflict is enduring and unresolved, or in situations marked by vast socioeconomic, cultural or political differences. This project, which trains a graduate student in how to conduct rigorous, scientifically grounded fieldwork, examines how health care delivery can be improved in areas of conflict, and among and between individuals who are socially marginalized. The project explores how medical neutrality is used as an ethical doctrine to deliver health care in a conflict arena. The research takes place in Israel, and is focused on the Palestinian doctors who make up 12% of the physicians working in Israel. The researcher asks how claims of neutrality and expertise allow Palestinian physicians to gain legitimacy and a sense of belonging within Israel. The project follows pilot research conducted in 2013 among Palestinian medical students, physicians, and administrators. The 12-month product would involve ethnographic fieldwork at four sites using a range of inductive data collection techniques, including participant observation, interviews, clinical setting ethnography, and archival media research and analysis. The project will make important contributions to medical anthropology. Importantly, the project would explore how professional scientific and technological knowledge plays a role in political and social processes, and how such expertise can create opportunities for individuals from marginalized populations. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology, the project would improve understandings for how to deliver health care in an area of conflict.