PSTC Research: SOCIAL BEHAVIOR AND HEALTH
Research in social behavior and health cuts a broad swath through the activity of the PSTC, as it does at many other population centers. The PSTC signature is distinguished by the introduction of strong disciplinary frameworks to the study of health behavior, enriched by interdisciplinary collaboration that integrates anthropological, economic, public health, and sociological perspectives. While description is the starting point, the major emphasis is on identifying causal processes and testing theories of health-related behavior, such as household investments, on health outcomes. As such PSTC associates draw on frames taken from multiple disciplines to examine health, using both data taken at single points in time to characterize health and health differentials, and data from longitudinal studies that examine causal mechanisms affecting health and health behaviors.
Health research at the PSTC is also distinctive in its emphasis on global health issues affecting Africa and South Asia, by theoretically-driven study designs, and by mixed-method data collection. The following description highlights selected health research projects underway or in planning. Three broad areas of emphasis include population growth, household incomes, and resource allocation; physical and social contexts of health; and health and healthcare in the U.S.
Projects in the Social Behavior and Health thematic area include:
Project Title: The Economic Determinants of Domestic Violence
PSTC Investigators: Anna Aizer
Funding: NSF
Other Research Areas: Families and Households
Description: This project involves an analysis of the impact of women's wages and labor market conditions on violence against women. To establish a causal relationship between earnings and domestic violence, I take advantage of the fact that certain industries are dominated by women (eg, services) and others by men (eg, construction). Increases in demand in these sectors results in exogenous increases in female and male wages, respectively. By focusing on local labor market conditions and exogenous labor demand shocks, I can identify the impact of changes
in relative income on domestic violence.Project Title: Prenatal Conditions and Postnatal Environments: Impact on Future Economic Status
PSTC Investigators: Anna Aizer
Funding: NSF
Other Research Areas: Families and Households
Description:This proposal will explore whether and how prenatal conditions and postnatal environments explain black-white differences in human capital accumulation and adult earnings with a focus on the role of stress.Project Title: Violence Against Women and Birth Outcomes
PSTC Investigators: Anna Aizer
Funding: NICHD
Other Research Areas: Families and Households
Description: Using individual-level California natality and mortality data linked to data on hospitalization for assault during the pregnancy for the period 1991-2002, I provide the first causal estimates of the impact of violence on birth outcomes using an instrumental variable strategy. This is followed by exploratory analysis of the pathways by which violence affects birth outcomes - through the direct effect of blunt trauma or the indirect effects of increased maternal risk taking and delay in seeking prenatal care.Project Title: The Effects of Health and Demographic Change on Economic Growth: Integrating Micro and Macro Perspectives
Principal Investigators: Andrew Foster, David Weil
Funding: Hewlett/PRB
Other Research Areas: Families and Households, African Demography
Description: This project will augment and promote the integration of five on-going projects based in the Department of Economics and the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown. The focus will be on the long term effects of early child health and nutrition on adult productivity, the role of effective disease management in increasing the economic activity of diseased adults, the role of health and demographic change in the sustainable use of environmental resources, and the effects of changes in health and demographic structure on the level and distribution of economic activity.Project Title: Food Security Among Resettled Refugees
PSTC Investigators: Craig Hadley
Funding: NSF
Other Research Areas: Families and Households, African Demography
Description: This project will produce estimates of the magnitude of the food insecurity situation in two resettled refugee communities, and will be the largest study of refugee health, and the only longitudinal study to date. By testing multiple determinants of health it will provide a nuanced understanding of what factors most influence health and well being in this vulnerable population. Results from the proposed research will have implications for several areas within anthropology including the health impacts of forced immigration, the relationship between culture and health, the causes of health disparities, and the use of anthropological methods to identify health-related issues relevant to study communities.
Project Title: Adolescents' Child Feeding Knowledge and Intentions
Funding: NICHD
PSTC Investigators: Craig Hadley
Other Research Areas: Families and Households, African Demography
Description: The proposed research seeks to explore current knowledge of child feeding practices and examining child feeding intentions among a diverse sample of Ethiopian adolescents. The main outcomes of interest are adolescents' knowledge and attitudes about specific feeding issues, and their intentions to exclusively breastfeed their children to six months, introduce appropriate foods starting at six months, and not use bottles to feed infants. Exposure to potential points of delivery for nutrition education programs will also be examined. Results from this proposed work will be among the first to report on adolescents' knowledge and intentions regarding infant and child feeding in the developing world, and will be useful as baseline data in this specific case, but will also have programmatic implications for public health interventions more broadly.
Project Title: Childcare in Challenging Environments: Identifying Barriers to Optimal Childcare Practice in Rural Tanzania
PSTC Investigators: Craig Hadley
Funding: NSF
Other Research Areas: Families and Households, African Demography
Description: This project supports ethnographic research into the causes and consequences of dramatic differences in the nutritional status of children from two ethnic groups living in rural Tanzania. Despite the same ecological, political, and physical environment, children of the agropastoralist Sukuma ethnic group have significantly lower rates of childhood stunting and underweight when compared to their neighbors, the horticulturalist Pimbwe, leading one to ask whether these differences in nutritional status reflect different risks of child mortality. Furthermore, if growth differences are related to young child feeding and care practices, why are the Sukuma are able to more closely conform to optimal practices when the Pimbwe cannot? This research conducted a cross-sectional study of the relationship between child growth and young child feeding and maternal caregiving behavior among Pimbwe and Sukuma children less than three years of age, followed by a one year prospective study of whether infant and child feeding and maternal care practices are associated with children’s weight gain and child mortality. This research seeks to tease apart the impact of family structure, economy, cultural beliefs, and maternal health on patterns of child feeding and care practices.Project Title: Gender and HIV Risk Among Young Adults
PSTC Investigators: Abigail Harrison (L. O'Sullivan, PI)
Funding: NICHD
Research Areas: Fertility and HIV/AIDS, African Demography
Description: Study of relationships among young adult men and women in school-based settings in New York and South Africa; development of questionnaires and scale measures to assess gender attributes in relation to risk for HIV infection; in-depth qualitative investigation of relationships and prevention.Project Title: Promoting Dual Protection Among Rural South African Youth
PSTC Investigators: Abigail Harrison (T. Exner, PI)
Funding: NICHD
Research Areas: Fertility and HIV/AIDS, African Demography
Description: Study of relationships among young adult men and women in school-based settings in New York and South Africa; development of questionnaires and scale measures to assess gender attributes in relation to risk for HIV infection; in-depth qualitative investigation of relationships and prevention.Project Title: The Effects of Institutional Transformation on Corruption in Indonesia
Principal Investigators: Vernon Henderson
Funding: NIH
Description: This project examines the dimensions and effects of corruption on resource allocation, as it affects firms in Indonesia. In the examination, one focus is the effects of local government restructuring and revenue capabilities on corruption, especially the effects of decentralization in early 2001, combined with democratization. Most corruption involves interface with local government officials. Corruption has been rampant in Indonesia. Based on a detailed survey of 1808 firms in Indonesia, firms report on average spending over 10% of costs on bribes and over 10% of management time in "smoothing business operations" with local officials. While the research will contribute to our general understanding of the nature and effects of corruption, an important issue worldwide, research of this type is also helping shape the public debate and movement to sharply reduce corruption within Indonesia itself.
Project Title: Population and Economic Recovery in Coastal Aceh: Aid and Village Institutions
Principal Investigators: Vernon Henderson (PI), Andrew Foster
Funding: NIH
Other Research Areas: Population and Environment, Spatial Inquiry
Description: This project will develop and test a series of inter-connected theories about the economic, social, and political processes that influence the recovery from large-scale losses of population and economic assets following a natural disaster. A key element is to evaluate the impact of external aid and the form of aid delivery on local behaviors, networks and institutions, as well as long term growth and inequality. The analysis focuses on coastal villages in Aceh, Indonesia, that were differentially affected by the 2004 tsunami, and will make use of a panel data set (initiated in 2005) of 111 villages and 550 fishing boat owners that contains rich detail on local economic and political institutions, interaction of villages with external institutions, population change, and trauma suffered. A subsequent round of the survey using previously committed resources is now being collected, which adds another 100 villages and 200 new boat owners. We propose two additional rounds of the survey, creating a panel from 2005 to 2013. The project brings together USA and Indonesian experts on issues of community development, health, the environment, political economy, and inequality.Project Title: The Cultural Context of Infertility in Southern Nigeria: Meanings, Consequences and Coping Mechanisms
Project Title: The Cultural Context of Infertility in Southern Nigeria: Meanings, Consequences and Coping Mechanisms
PSTC Investigators: Marida Hollos (Ulla Larsen, PI)
Funding: NSF
Research Areas: Families and Households, Fertility and HIV/AIDS, African Demography
Description: This research seeks to advance understanding of the cultural perceptions and social consequences of infertility in sub-Saharan Africa among the Ijo and Yakurr communities of southern Nigeria. It examines structural differences between these populations in order to analyze the link between descent and gender ideology on the one hand, and the perception of infertility and the treatment of infertile women on the other. The study is important for understanding the cultural perceptions and social consequences of infertility in sub-Saharan African societies.
PSTC Investigators: Marida Hollos (Ulla Larsen, PI)
Funding: NSF
Other Research Areas: Families and Households, African Demography
Description: This research seeks to advance understanding of the cultural perceptions and social consequences of infertility in sub-Saharan Africa among the Ijo and Yakurr communities of southern Nigeria. It examines structural differences between these populations in order to analyze the link between descent and gender ideology on the one hand, and the perception of infertility and the treatment of infertile women on the other. The study is important for understanding the cultural perceptions and social consequences of infertility in sub-Saharan African societies.
Project Title: Explaining Very Low Fertility in Italy
PSTC Investigators: David Kertzer, Michael White
Funding: NSF
Other Research Areas: Fertility and HIV/AIDS
Description: This project employs innovative multidisciplinary methodology and cutting-edge theory to seek a better explanation for very low fertility by focusing on Italy, a country that in the 1990s had the lowest fertility in the world, and which today has among the very lowest.Project Title: Partnership for Improving Adolescent Reproductive Health in Ethiopia
PSTC Investigators: David Lindstrom (PI), Dennis Hogan, Craig Hadley,
Stephen McGarvey
Funding: David and Lucile Packard Foundation
Research Areas: Families and Households, Fertility and HIV/AIDS, African Demography
Description:The primary goals of Brown’s proposed project, Partnership in Improving Adolescent Reproductive Health in Ethiopia, are to: (1) enhance Ethiopian university-based capacity to train graduate students in population and health research and in the translation of research results into policy-relevant conclusions and recommendations; (2) build a regional population database of families and youth for program evaluation, policy analysis, and scholarly research, which will serve as a model for university-based population and health research teams in other regions of the country; (3) measure the relative impact of radio serial dramas on adolescent reproductive health knowledge and behavior, and make recommendations regarding investments in radio dramas as an intervention strategy for reaching youth and influencing their behavior; (4) demonstrate the potential value of longitudinal surveys for assessing the impact of reproductive health interventions; (5) develop capacity to effectively communicate demographic and health research findings to local and national reproductive health stakeholders; and (6) increase knowledge of factors that place youth at high risk of poor health and early life outcomes, as well as identify those program interventions and features of family and community life that are protective of youth and lead to good health and successful outcomes in life.Project Title: Using Relationship Calendars to Improve Sexual Behavior Data among Kenyan Couples
PSTC Investigators: Nancy Luke
Funding: NIH
Other Research Areas: Fertility and HIV/AIDS, African Demography
Description: This project will provide researchers with proven data collection methods so information can be analyzed to understand how relationship histories and couple dynamics affect the sexual risk behaviors and reproductive health of young women and men in Kisumu, Kenya, a low-income urban setting where young women and their male partners are affected by high rates of unintended pregnancy and STIs, including HIV.Project Title: The Public Health Impact of Antiretroviral Therapy in South Africa
PSTC Investigators: Mark Lurie
Funding: NIH / NIMH
Other Research Areas: Fertility and HIV/AIDS, African Demography
Description: This project, conducted in collaboration with colleagues at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, collects data on sexual behavior and incidence of sexually transmitted infections among people who are co-infected with TB and HIV and who are on antiretroviral therapy within an existing randomized controlled trial. This and other data will be used to develop maResearchal models to estimate the public health impact of HIV treatment in terms of secondary transmission averted.
Project Title: Collaborative AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA)
PSTC Investigators: Mark Lurie (S. Abdool Karim, PI)
Funding: NIH
Other Research Areas: Fertility and HIV/AIDS, African Demography
Description: The project will undertake globally relevant and locally responsive research that contributes to understanding HIV pathogenesis and epidemiology as well as the nexus between tuberculosis and AIDS care; to build local research infrastructure through cores of expertise; and to provide training through research fellowships tenable both in South Africa and the USA.Project Title: Social Networks and Mobility in Dynamic Economies
PSTC Investigators: Kaivan Munshi
Funding: NSF
Other Research Areas: Spatial Inquiry
Description: This project will study how social networks might support individual mobility, and facilitate economic activity more generally, in a dynamic environment.Project Title: Microcredit and Health Services Experiment in Bangladesh
PSTC Investigators: Mark Pitt (Stan Becker, PI)
Funding: NIH
Other Research Areas: Families and Households, Spatial Inquiry
Description: This project will assemble, collect and analyze multiple rounds of survey data from Bangladesh, providing family-based and individual panel information on the long-term health and productivity effects of childhood nutritional intakes, indoor air pollution, and health interventions over a 25-year span, using a newly-available panel survey as well as a proposed additional survey round.Project Title: Children's Health and Nutrition, Adult Outcomes, and Intergenerational and Spatial Mobility
PSTC Investigators: Mark Pitt
Funding: NIH
Other Research Areas: Families and Households, Spatial Inquiry
Description: This project will assemble, collect and analyze multiple rounds of survey data from Bangladesh, providing family-based and individual panel information on the long-term health and productivity effects of childhood nutritional intakes, indoor air pollution, and health interventions over a 25-year span, using a newly-available panel survey as well as a proposed additional survey round.Project Title: Love, Marriage, and HIV: A Multi-site Study of Gender and HIV Risk
PSTC Investigators: Daniel J. Smith (Jennifer Hirsch, PI)
Funding: NIH (Subcontract with Columbia Univ.)
Other Research Areas: Fertility and HIV/AIDS, African Demography
Description: Smith is one of five investigators from five universities in this comparative ethnographic study that explores the relationship between changing conceptions and practices of marriage, gender inequality, and HIV risk in five countries (Nigeria, Mexico, Vietnam, Uganda, and Papua New Guinea). Smith is responsible for the Nigeria research. This research explores the proposition that married women living in social contexts of persistent gender inequality and economic contexts of under- or unemployment and labor migration are placed uniquely at risk for HIV infection by the worldwide diffusion of an ideology of marriage as a relationship based on romantic love and companionship between equal partners. The project's specific aims are: 1) to compare, across five developing country sites, the relative penetration of ideas and practices associated with compassionate marriage and the specific forms of marital and extramarital relationships; 2) to understand and explain the ways in which these ideas about and practices of intimacy are shaped and constrained by gender-unequal structures and ideologies, local forms of economic organization, and cultural change; and 3) to evaluate the implications of these ideas and practices for HIV prevention within and outside of marriage. The project’s methodology promises to demonstrate value of a comparative ethnographic approach in which qualitative research is used not just to uncover data in one particular context in greater depth, but to enable cross-cultural comparisons based on ethnographic research.
Project Title: Household-Level Effects on HIV/AIDS Mortality
PSTC Investigators: Nicholas Townsend (Sangeetha Madhavan, PI)
Funding: NIH
Other Research Areas: Fertility and HIV/AIDS, Families and Households,
African Demography
Description: This project addresses the effects of HIV/AIDS-related morbidity and mortality on household structure, composition, power dynamics and children's living arrangements. HIV/AIDS has attained epidemic proportions in sub-Saharan Africa over the past 10 years with particularly high prevalence rates in southern Africa.Project Title: Measuring Social Connection and Children's Well-Being Using Multiple Data Sources
PSTC Investigators: Nicholas Townsend, John Logan
Other Research Areas: Spatial Inquiry, Families and Households, African Demography
Funding: NICHD
Description: The research will develop improved measures of social connection through coordinated analyses of intensive ethnographic data and a longitudinal demographic data about the same population in a rural area of South Africa. A great volume of research conducted in various contexts demonstrates that social connection is an important determinant of well-being measured by outcomes such as education, nutritional status, employment prospects, access to health care, and support of the aged and infirm. The most common measure of social connection in population and public health research is co-residence, which has critical limitations. Failure to attend to the full range of social relationships limits our ability to understand the social context of health and well-being. To redress this failure, we will use existing ethnographic data and longitudinal demographic data from rural South Africa to develop new measures of social connection that can be used in social surveys.Project Title: Urbanization, Health and Environmental Quality in Coastal Ghana
PSTC Investigators: Michael White (PI), Stephen McGarvey
Funding: NIH
Other Research Areas: Spatial Inquiry, Population and Environment, African Demography
Description: This project draws upon existing links among three currently collaborating institutions to examine the social and demographic processes that are closely linked to health and environmental health risks and how these in turn influence local thinking about environmental issues.
Learn more at the Project Website.