Practices of disciplinary symbiosis: (Re)blending theory and method, anthropology and public health.

Background: If you are dually trained in anthropology and public health and your goal is an academic career, in what academic unit should you make your professional home? Should you be a public health-trained academic anthropologist or an anthropologist in a public health school or program?

Aims: Associate Professor of Public Health Anne Sebert Kuhlmann and Assistant Professor of Anthropology Stephanie McClure see their dual training as essential to enacting the career goal of fostering understanding of and positively affecting health in people's everyday lives and preparing students to do the same. "We credit our dual training for our robust perspectives on the nature and causes of health and illness and our recognition that theory and methods are complementary tools in teaching and research. We also recognize that though dual training brings conceptual power and functional applicability to our work, it can also be a challenge to navigate a career path that effectively blends the two.

Variability in Weight Concern and Physical Activity Engagement Among African American Adolescent Girls.

Lower rates of recreational physical activity (PA) among African American (AA) adolescent girls relative to other US age/race/gender groups are assumed to reflect within-race similarity in PA attitudes and practices. However, variability in PA attitudes and practices among AA adolescent girls is not well studied. To address this, a class-diverse sample of 51 AA adolescent girls' responses to survey items querying weight concern (WC) and PA was examined for sub-groupings using cluster analysis.

On body economics and fitting in: upward mobility and obesity stigma in Jamaica.

: Jamaican culture is considered 'fat-loving,' and thus less likely to foster obesity stigma. However, the importance of tourism to Jamaica's economy, global trends toward a thinness aesthetic and extant ethos' of bodily self-acceptance status-based bodily critique suggest that obesity stigma may exist in Jamaica - particularly in the context of class status aspiration.: This pilot study examined the relationship between upward mobility and fat stigma in Kingston, Jamaica in two samples.

Adolescent self-defined neighborhoods and activity spaces: spatial overlap and relations to physical activity and obesity.

Defining the proper geographic scale for built environment exposures continues to present challenges. In this study, size attributes and exposure calculations from two commonly used neighborhood boundaries were compared to those from neighborhoods that were self-defined by a sample of 145 urban minority adolescents living in subsidized housing estates. Associations between five built environment exposures and physical activity, overweight and obesity were also examined across the three neighborhood definitions.

Perceptions of the religion-health connection among African American church members.

In this qualitative study, the authors examine perceptions of the religiosity-health connection among African American church members. They conducted 33 interviews with members of predominately African American churches. The clergy and members from each congregation completed semistructured interviews.

The role of culture in health communication.

This paper examines the role of culture as a factor in enhancing the effectiveness of health communication. We describe culture and how it may be applied in audience segmentation and introduce a model of health communication planning--McGuire's communication/persuasion model--as a framework for considering the ways in which culture may influence health communication effectiveness. For three components of the model (source, message, and channel factors), the paper reviews how each affects communication and persuasion, and how each may be affected by culture.