RAPID: Cultural Patterns in Stigma in the Transmission of Disease: Ebola in Two Dallas Neighborhoods

本项目是响应NSF 15-006 Dear Colleague Letter on Ebola提交的。科学研究人员已经确定，控制疾病的努力是高度不同的，这取决于不同群体如何看待他们的脆弱性。在不同的文化、语言和文化背景下，对风险和耻辱的看法可能有很大差异。该项目旨在探索在受埃博拉影响的社区背景下，关于耻辱和风险的观念是如何演变的。该项目有可能为有关如何改善人类对流动卫生威胁的反应的公共卫生辩论提供信息，同时促进公共安全以减少传播威胁。医学人类学家Smith-Morris和文化人类学家Faith Nibbs博士都是达拉斯居民，正在对受影响的达拉斯社区进行研究，他们有一个独特的优势，可以比较社区对这种传染病的经历，以及不同社会经济阶层、种族和语言混合以及文化的居民的耻辱经历。该项目解决了两个关键问题。首先，媒体对达拉斯三起埃博拉病例以及受害者所在社区的大量报道，如何改变了人类的行为？第二，人们在改变自己的行为方式方面是否存在文化模式，无论是个人还是集体，在社区中，管理风险和耻辱，或者分享和回应有关埃博拉的教育材料？研究人员将利用已被证明在类似的精神和公共卫生环境中有效的耻辱量表，对提示进行调整，以包括针对埃博拉病毒的特定问题。然后，研究人员将进行更深入的访谈，研究埃博拉和耻辱、信息追踪以及埃博拉危机对资源和行动的影响。来自调查、访谈、媒体分析和参与观察的定量和定性数据将被编目，并使用广泛推荐用于基于语料库的方法的一致性软件进行分析。预期研究结果将有助于更好地了解城市多文化社区的危机管理模式，从而使未来的公共卫生和教育战略更有效率和更有效。

This project was submitted in response to NSF 15-006 Dear Colleague Letter on Ebola. Scientific researchers have established that efforts to contain disease are highly variable depending on how different groups of people perceive their vulnerability. Perceptions of risk and stigma can vary considerably between different cultural, linguistic and cultural settings. This project proposes to explore how ideas about stigma and risk evolve in the context of communities impacted by Ebola. The project has the potential to inform public health debates about how to improve human response to mobile health threats, while promoting public safety to reduce the threat of transmission.Drs. Smith-Morris, medical anthropologist, and Dr. Faith Nibbs, cultural anthropologist, both Dallas residents with ongoing research in affected Dallas neighborhoods, have a unique vantage point from which to compare neighborhood-level experience of this infectious disease, and the experiences of stigma by residents of different socioeconomic class, ethnic and linguistic mix, and culture. The project addresses two key questions. First, how is human behavior changing in response to heavy media coverage of the three Dallas Ebola cases, and the neighborhoods from which those victims emerged? And second, are there cultural patterns in the way that people change their behaviors, both individually and collectively in neighborhoods, to manage risk and stigma, or to share and respond to educational materials about Ebola? Drawing upon stigma scales that have proven effective in comparable mental and public health contexts, the researchers will adapt the prompts to include questions specific to Ebola. The researchers will then follow up with more in-depth interviews that examine the Ebola and stigma, information tracing, and the impact of the Ebola crisis on resources and actions. Quantitative and qualitative data from surveys, interviews, media analysis, and participant observation within the two communities under study will be catalogued and analyzed with concordance software widely recommended for corpus-based methods. The results are expected to create a better understanding of crisis management patterns in urban, multi-cultural neighborhoods, so that future public health and education strategies may be more efficient and more effective.