The Duke Global Health Institute has awarded two Duke faculty members with funding to conduct global health research in Tanzania and Thailand related to gender and health, one of DGHI's six signature research initiatives.

 

A DGHI grant has been awarded to Ara Wilson, associate professor of women's studies and cultural anthropology, for a gender, labor and well-being pilot research project in the medical tourist industry in Thailand.  The two-year, $30,000 award explores the contradictions between national investments in public health and medical tourism by investigating the health experiences of low-wage female workers whose labor supports the medical-tourism industry. The interdisciplinary study will draw from medicine, social sciences and the humanities to assess the health conditions of laborers, how they perceive their own medical needs and access services, and how they navigate a two-tiered system as workers and patients.

 

"Medical tourism, where the relatively well-off travel to other countries for health care, is seen as a strategy for economic development for nations such as India, Thailand, or the Dominican Republic. My project examines women workers behind the scenes of medical tourism in Thailand, asking how their work for elite international medicine affects their own sense of health," said Wilson. "The DGHI award enhances this research, especially through its support of interdisciplinary collaborations."

 

The award builds on Wilson's long-term work on gender, work and consumption in Bangkok. She has some graduate and undergraduate training in medical anthropology, but has only recently incorporated health topics into her research. "As someone new to global health research, and trained in interpretive social science methods, the association with the Gender and Health project introduces me to a network of global health researchers."

 

DGHI member Jeff Wilkinson, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology, is also principal investigator on a two-year, $50,000 award to research the psychological effects of obstetric fistula in Tanzanian women, such as post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. The study, which aims to develop effective ways of dealing with or preventing these problems, is a collaboration with DGHI partner Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre in Moshi Tanzania, where Wilkinson has worked for the past two years to launch the Duke-KCMC Women's Health Collaboration.