The Value of Anthropology in Child Health Policy

Abstract

Working at the nexus of medical anthropology and the anthropology of childhood, this article challenges three assumptions often embedded in child health policy: (1) children are the passive recipients of healthcare; (2) children’s knowledge of illness and their body can be assumed based on adult understandings; and (3) children’s healthcare can be isolated from their social relations. I explore these themes through the case study of a 2011 New Zealand government initiative to reduce the rates of rheumatic fever affecting low-income Māori and Pasifika children. Drawing on fieldwork with around 80 children at an Auckland primary school, I show how the ‘sore throat’ programme does not merely treat streptococcus A infections, but plays an active role in constituting children’s experiences and understandings of their bodies and illness, and in shaping healthcare practices in ways unintended by policy-makers.

Ending rheumatic heart disease in Australia: the evidence for a new approach

“…A recent systematic review collated publications addressing the lived experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living with ARF and RHD 37. The authors (one senior Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research leader and two non‐Indigenous researchers with extensive experience in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health) analysed 24 publications (15 focused on Australia2,38‐51 and nine on New Zealand52’60) using a critical decolonising lens, drawing on both postcolonial theory and critical race theory. In addition to the inductive thematic analysis of the identified publications, a sociolinguistic analysis was undertaken of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research participants’ direct quotes extracted from the 15 Australian publications.…”

Voices behind the Statistics: A Systematic Literature Review of the Lived Experience of Rheumatic Heart Disease

“…That is, focus can be shifted to questions such as what are the mechanisms that change social inequity at a local community level, and how might understanding and developing empowerment make a difference. These questions are best answered by broadening the disciplinary lens of research to include social science research that uses decolonising methods [43].…”

“…Use of the term 'people' is mirrored by the large gaps in the reviewed literature relating to children's and adolescents' lived experience. Notable exceptions in the reviewed literature were the work of Mitchell et al [30,32,33] and Spray et al from the New Zealand literature [43]. We argue that a greater focus on children and adolescents would build on the Indigenous cultural strength that recognises the place of children in the continuity of Indigenous society; that is, they grow up to be adults with the responsibility to care for their culture and country; "Children are our future" [44].…”

Towards a child‐centred public health: Lessons from rheumatic fever prevention in Aotearoa New Zealand

“…I did schoolwork alongside children in classrooms and several mornings a week observed the school ‘sore throat’ clinic. I found the value of these child‐centred ethnographic methods lay not only in hearing children's perspectives in interviews, but building long‐term relationships, witnessing children's encounters, and triangulating what children told me with what I observed them doing (Spray, 2018). These methods follow the anthropological tradition of ‘being there’ (Geertz, 1988; Trnka, 2020), where through combining embodied and spatially located experience with other forms of data, I constructed an understanding of children's encounters with health care services from multiple perspectives.…”