Recent outbreaks of Ebola virus disease (2013–2016) and Zika virus (2015–2016) bring renewed recognition of the need to understand social pathways of disease transmission and barriers to care. Social scientists, anthropologists in particular, have been recognised as important players in disease outbreak response because of their ability to assess social, economic and political factors in local contexts. However, in emergency public health response, as with any interdisciplinary setting, different professions may disagree over methods, ethics and the nature of evidence itself. A disease outbreak is no place to begin to negotiate disciplinary differences. Given increasing demand for anthropologists to work alongside epidemiologists, clinicians and public health professionals in health crises, this paper gives a basic introduction to anthropological methods and seeks to bridge the gap in disciplinary expectations within emergencies. It asks: ‘What can anthropologists do in a public health crisis and how do they do it?’ It argues for an interdisciplinary conception of emergency and the recognition that social, psychological and institutional factors influence all aspects of care.

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Despite broadly shared interest in the welfare of 'precarious lives', medical anthropology and medical humanitarianism are too often in tension. In this survey, we sketch a history of the two disciplines, then track three major patterns through which anthropologists approach the analysis of medical humanitarian efforts. Our three patterns frame medical anthropology as: 1) a critique of medical humanitarianism and its ties to colonialism and globalization, 2) a translation of medical humanitarianism and its associated lexicon, 3) and a reform of medical humanitarianism from the inside out. In highlighting the individual strengths of these three approaches, we argue for the value of medical anthropology -as both a mindset and a method -in health and humanitarian emergencies. Keywords medical anthropology, medical humanitarianism, global health, applied anthropology, suffering slot Anthropological approaches to medical humanitarianism 2