Applying Medical Anthropology in Health Careers

The impression that medical anthropology is an academic activity is misleading, because for every academic medical anthropologist there are several practicing anthropologists employed outside the university. Anthropologists have been engaged in international public health from earliest days of medical anthropology. Carol Jenkins is another medical anthropologist who, like Ted Green, worked to slow global spread of HIV/AIDS. The career path that led Carol Jenkins to work on AIDS internationally was similar to that followed by Ted Green. Reporting on the AIDS situation in the Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea, she noted that it has the same pattern as AIDS in southern Africa, rather than either the North American or Asian patterns. Many medical anthropologists begin as cultural or biological anthropologists and later develop research interests related to health. The most visible career opportunities for medical anthropologists in developed countries have been as researchers and as educators training future health care providers, either in professional schools or in preprofessional education.

Medical anthropology · Sociology · Anthropology · Empathy and Medical Education · Healthcare cost, quality, practices · Innovations in Medical Education · Psychology

• Anthropologist and Government Employee

  Open Access•Gemmae M Fix•Annals of Anthropological Practice•2013

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