SICK

In the 1960s George Foster, a founding figure in medical anthropology, theorized that Indigenous communities adhered to the ‘Image of the Limited Good.” Accordingly, good things in life were limited, with the effect that one person’s good came at a cost to another. This photo essay challenges the Image of the Limited Good. I suggest that the people who spread this idea are not Indigenous but upper class and White politicians who deploy the idea of limits to bolster their racist agendas. I juxtapose the deaths of Indigenous children at the US border with the kindness my children encountered in Guatemala to illustrate how experiences are structured by racism, not limits. The essay concludes by asking what we can learn from Indigenous parents about how to replace the Image of the Limited Good with an Image of Abundance

Translational competency

This article introduces the notion of ‘translational competency’, a skill of attending to different understandings of health and how these are negotiated between medical settings and everyday life. This skill is especially important for the design of obesity-prevention policies and programs, given the diverse values surrounding both healthy eating and desirable weight. Through its focus on communicative interactions, translational competency entails a refusal to treat cultural differences regarding diet or body size as a problem. Rather, it encourages engagement with the relational contexts out of which health problems develop and transform, taking culture to be a process of negotiation and adaptation. In this article I present an example of the utility of the skill of translational competency taken from research on obesity in Guatemala. I then illustrate how translational competency might be used in the design of obesity interventions

An Interdisciplinary Education and Service Bundle to Reduce Hospital Resource Utilization and Decrease Pediatric Asthma-Related Morbidity and Mortality

The purpose of this quality improvement project was to reduce hospital resource utilization and improve health outcomes for children with asthma by providing an evidence-based, interdisciplinary education and service bundle to patients and families admitted to a Children’s Hospital in Northern New Jersey with a primary diagnosis of asthma. The 2020 Asthma Management Guidelines published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2020), the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) and a modified systematic review identified common themes among children at risk for asthma-related morbidity and mortality and high hospital resource utilization. These themes included medication misuse, asthma trigger misidentification, lack of awareness of signs and symptoms of an asthma attack, modifiable and non-modifiable environmental risk factors, and social determinants of health. The literature also highlighted the importance of standardizing education provided to patients and families during their inpatient stay. Use of a bundle that incorporates standardized, evidence-based education and individualized care planning to address social determinants of health may help decrease hospital resource utilization and improve overall health outcomes for children with asthma

School Choice: An analysis of parental and primary school perspectives on attracting students to All Saints’ School, Mansfield.

Drawing on key social and educational research, this study considers the factors taken in to account when parents decide on a secondary school on behalf of their children. It centers on research conducted during the final term of the academic year 2012-2013 for All Saints’ School in Mansfield, England with the objective of delivering a marketing plan; it strives to identify and outline factors important to parents. Further, the influence of primary school head teachers in the secondary school choice decision is introduced. Research interviews were held with a number of parents and head teachers of local primary schools; key findings are outlined. Existing quantitative data provided by the school was used to validate the impact of location and journey distance on applications over a three year period and to draw conclusions in combination with the qualitative data. The outcomes are reviewed and considered in terms of business and marketing implications for the school. In particular, the concept of market orientation is considered in the context of public sector organisations in general and schools in particular, and the concept of market segmentation is discussed, based on existing theory, with several recommendations for the application of this concept in the context of the study

Exploring Local History through Primary Sources: Model Lesson Plans for High School Teachers and Librarians

This paper documents the process of creating lesson plans that use primary sources to teach about the movement toward civil rights in Durham, North Carolina. It also discusses the creation of a website designed to house the lesson plans and offers teachers and librarians resources on how to find and select primary sources. The lesson plans were created using backward design, and are grounded in elements of inquiry-based learning. The paper explores the benefits of teaching local history with primary sources, and supports this research by examining how primary sources can help diversify history instruction through critical race theory's concept of counter-storytelling. The website can be accessed at https://localhistorythroughprimarysources.wordpress.com/.Master of Science in Library Scienc

Disaggregating diabetes

Interest in disaggregating diabetes into numerous subtypes is growing as patients and providers recognize the limitations of standard diabetes typologies. As anthropologists, we draw attention to how ‘subtyping’ may reduce stigma derived from the connection between obesity and ‘type 2 diabetes’. We highlight the complexities that drive diabetes and argue that an exclusive or dominant focus on diet and obesity obfuscates other underlying risks. Yet, we warn that subtyping may promote unnecessary pharmaceuticalization, especially for other subtypes of diabetes that may be associated with stress and inflammation. We call upon providers to continue to closely attend to patients’ lived experiences. While we recognize the shortcomings of the existing classificatory scheme, patients’ outcomes and prognoses are often more closely connected to the social and medical support they receive than to the underlying metabolic classification

School Choice: An analysis of parental and primary school perspectives on attracting students to All Saints’ School, Mansfield.

Drawing on key social and educational research, this study considers the factors taken in to account when parents decide on a secondary school on behalf of their children. It centers on research conducted during the final term of the academic year 2012-2013 for All Saints’ School in Mansfield, England with the objective of delivering a marketing plan; it strives to identify and outline factors important to parents. Further, the influence of primary school head teachers in the secondary school choice decision is introduced. Research interviews were held with a number of parents and head teachers of local primary schools; key findings are outlined. Existing quantitative data provided by the school was used to validate the impact of location and journey distance on applications over a three year period and to draw conclusions in combination with the qualitative data. The outcomes are reviewed and considered in terms of business and marketing implications for the school. In particular, the concept of market orientation is considered in the context of public sector organisations in general and schools in particular, and the concept of market segmentation is discussed, based on existing theory, with several recommendations for the application of this concept in the context of the study

Challenges of Measuring Graduation in Rwanda

Rwanda demonstrates how a process of community consultation and participation is able to identify and rank community members according to ‘social poverty’, drawing on the Ubudehe tradition which is considered a strength of Rwanda's social fabric. However, with the Ubudehe categorisation now the basis for determining eligibility to a range of social benefits, the process has come under some strain. This article highlights two issues related to targeting and graduation: (1) the difficulty in identifying the poor/non?poor and ranking the population using community participatory techniques; and (2) the sensitivity of eligibility criteria and graduation thresholds to different targeting modalities. Our primary interest is to establish whether improvements for identifying the poor and non?poor can be made without undermining community ownership and what these improvements would look like. This will be useful for policymakers in Rwanda as the new five?year development strategy places importance on graduating households out of extreme poverty

Ccdc11 is a novel centriolar satellite protein essential for ciliogenesis and establishment of left-right asymmetry

The establishment of left–right (L-R) asymmetry in vertebrates is dependent on the sensory and motile functions of cilia during embryogenesis. Mutations in CCDC11 disrupt L-R asymmetry and cause congenital heart disease in humans, yet the molecular and cellular functions of the protein remain unknown. Here we demonstrate that Ccdc11 is a novel component of centriolar satellites—cytoplasmic granules that serve as recruitment sites for proteins destined for the centrosome and cilium. Ccdc11 interacts with core components of satellites, and its loss disrupts the subcellular organization of satellite proteins and perturbs primary cilium assembly. Ccdc11 colocalizes with satellite proteins in human multiciliated tracheal epithelia, and its loss inhibits motile ciliogenesis. Similarly, depletion of CCDC11 in Xenopus embryos causes defective assembly and motility of cilia in multiciliated epidermal cells. To determine the role of CCDC11 during vertebrate development, we generated mutant alleles in zebrafish. Loss of CCDC11 leads to defective ciliogenesis in the pronephros and within the Kupffer’s vesicle and results in aberrant L-R axis determination. Our results highlight a critical role for Ccdc11 in the assembly and function of motile cilia and implicate centriolar satellite–associated proteins as a new class of proteins in the pathology of L-R patterning and congenital heart disease