Health, Illness, and Healing Interview Assignment
Health, Illness, and Healing
Interview Assignment
For your interview project due in week four you will conduct an interview with person who has experienced a serious illness. This illness can be acute or chronic. Examples include but are not limited to cancer, multiple sclerosis, depression, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), lupus, fibromyalgia, and congestive heart failure. You will interview this person using the eight questions proposed by Arthur Kleinman regarding the explanatory model of illness. These questions are:
1) What do you think has caused your illness?
2) Why do you think it started when it did?
3) What do you think your illness does inside your body?
4) How severe is your illness? Will it have a short or long course?
5) What kind of treatment did you think you should receive?
6) What are the most important results you hoped to receive from this treatment?
7) What are the chief problems your illness has caused you?
8) What do you fear most about your illness/treatment?
For the assignment due this week, you will begin by planning your interview.
Project Plan Requirements
Decide whom you will interview for your project (and why), and then submit a Project Plan:
The first paragraph of your plan should discuss who you will interview, and why you selected that person. You should also ensure that the person will be able to respond to the eight interview questions. You also should discuss how you plan to relate the interview to some of the medical anthropology information we will discuss in class.
The second paragraph should describe your how you plan to schedule and conduct the interview. You do not want to wait to do this at the last minute. Also, discuss a backup plan in case your first interview subject cannot do the interview.
IMPORTANT – Because of the COVID19 outbreak, please plan to conduct your interview remotely through phone, video chat, email, etc. unless you are already living with the person you plan to interview.
This assignment will use Turnitin to check for academic integrity. Please review the Turnitin information in your syllabus for more details.
ANTH350 Health, Illness, and Healing
Interview Assignment – Learning Resources
Part of your interview assignment will be analyzing the interview data you collected in the context of the course learning resources. You will use the learning resources to help explain your interview data, and to develop your own conclusions about the meanings that your interviewee gave to their illness. For this assignment please fill out and complete the attached reference worksheet with information from five sources from the learning materials. If, as you are completing your final write up, you find that some of the sources are not as relevant as you thought they would be, you can change them. This form is just a preliminary list of sources to get you to start thinking about your project.
This assignment will use Turnitin to check for academic integrity. Please review the Turnitin information in your syllabus for more details.
ANTH350 Health, Illness, and Healing
Interview Assignment – Short Essay
To improve the quality of medical services, it is critically important that health care professionals take into account the culture, language, health beliefs, and environmental differences found in patients. As you are learning throughout this class, cultural competence is very important in helping health care professionals effectively treat their patients. Medical anthropology can assist in the understanding of the ways in which people of diverse cultures and belief systems perceive health and illness and respond to various symptoms, diseases, and treatments. The explanatory model of illness is one way to give healthcare professionals knowledge of the beliefs the patient holds about their illness, the meanings they attach to their illness, and their expectations about the treatment of their illness. The goal of the explanatory model is to compare the patient’s perceptions of their illness with the health care provider’s in order to help identify major discrepancies that may cause problems in managing the illness.
For your interview project due this week you will conduct and analyze an interview with a person who has experienced a serious illness. This illness can be acute or chronic. Examples include but are not limited to cancer, multiple sclerosis, depression, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), lupus, fibromyalgia, and congestive heart failure. You will interview this person using the eight questions proposed by Arthur Kleinman regarding the explanatory model of illness. These questions are:
1) What do you think has caused your illness?
2) Why do you think it started when it did?
3) What do you think your illness does inside your body?
4) How severe is your illness? Will it have a short or long course?
5) What kind of treatment did you think you should receive?
6) What are the most important results you hoped to receive from this treatment?
7) What are the chief problems your illness has caused you?
8) What do you fear most about your illness/treatment?
Once you have collected the answers to these questions, you should analyze the responses in the context of the course learning using the references you listed in the week 3 assignment or other sources as needed.
You should open the paper with a discussion of the interview itself. You should not provide the actual questions and answers, but a detailed summary of the interview. In other words, using the responses to the eight questions, discuss in detail how your interviewee explained their experience of their illness. You should use direct quotes to give voice to their experiences, and to validate your claims on their experiences.
The next section of the paper should be your own analysis of the interview using the learning materials and other sources. Think about the reasons your interviewee explained their experiences the way they did. Was it due to cultural beliefs, social inequalities, stigma, or other factors that we are learning about in class? Make sure to connect their explanations of their illness to the medical anthropology literature.
You should conclude your paper with your own thoughts about the interview and the explanatory model. Just as the healthcare professional uses the explanatory model to determine discrepancies in their perception of illness and the patient’s perception, how did you your perception of their illness compare with theirs? Did they tell you anything surprising or unexpected about how they feel about their illness? Why do you feel that discrepancies in perceptions occurred? Finally, what are your thoughts on the usefulness of the explanatory model? How can it contribute to cultural competency in the healthcare system?
Writing Guidelines
The final paper should be 4-6 pages in length, double-spaced with 12 point font, not including tables or the reference list.
The final paper should include a title page, an introduction, a thesis statement, a body, a conclusion, and a reference list.
ANTH350 Health, Illness, and Healing
Final Research Paper
Choose one of the following epidemic or pandemic diseases: Bubonic Plague, Smallpox, Leprosy, SARS, Polio, HIV/AIDS, Ebola, or H1N1. If you have another widespread epidemic or pandemic you want to write about please send me an e-mail for permission.
The first section of your paper should be a detailed explanation of the origins of the disease, and how it spread. You also should trace the history of how it affected the human population for the time period in which it was prevalent. If the disease is still affecting large numbers of people (such as HIV/AIDS), you can pick a specific time period to discuss. What were the attempted medical and social interventions and preventions during that time period?
The second part of the paper should focus on the anthropological contexts of the disease. How would a medical anthropologist view this disease? You should select specific concepts from the course learning activities. For example, you could include a detailed discussion of how the disease fits into either the ecological/evolutionary model of disease, or the political-economy model of disease. You could discuss it from a global health viewpoint, or from a structural violence viewpoint. You could bring in concepts such as stigma, or social inequalities. Make sure to include several of the course concepts in your discussion, and cite the appropriate academic sources.
You should conclude your paper by responding to the question – if a medical anthropologist could go back in time to when this disease was prevalent, what could they contribute to the understanding of this disease? What specific contributions would they make? For example, if there was stigma surrounding the disease, what type of information about the stigma of this disease would an anthropologist research? What cultural factors relate to the rise and spread of this disease, etc.? How would a medical anthropologist be able to contribute to the understanding of this disease? In other words, your paper should not be a clinical or medical discussion of the disease, but an anthropological one using the concepts and theories you learned about in class.
Writing Guidelines
The final paper should be 5-7 pages in length, double-spaced with 12 point font, not including tables or the reference list.
The final paper should include a title page, an introduction, a thesis statement, a body, a conclusion and a reference list.
Readability
Your paper should use correct grammar, effective topic sentences and transitions, an organized and clear flow, limited use of quotations, and synthesis of information using your own words. It should incorporate references.
Citation and Reference Style
Your paper should be written in APA style (7th edition).
This assignment will use Turnitin to check for academic integrity. Please review the Turnitin information in your syllabus for more details.
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