Transforming medical anthropology: Community, praxis, and the Black Feminist Health Science Studies Collaboratory.

Despite the transformative contributions of Black feminist thought, medical anthropology often fails to recognize or center the works of Black feminist thinkers. We argue that Black feminist theory is critical for a study and praxis of new approaches to healing, health, medicine, illness, disability, and care. We can't continue to simply recognize that current systems are failing us; Black feminist theory moves us past recognition toward transformative liberation.

Anthropological knowledge under redaction: Meditations on race, health, and aesthetics.

Emerging from experimentations with form during our 2021 inaugural BFHSS Collaboratory, this article dabbles in redaction while examining logics of race and aesthetics embedded in how health is defined, measured, and depicted. I also examine logics structuring who is legible as a producer of knowledge, whose body is one from which knowledge is extracted, and who can be given access to population groups for study. Form in this article offers a reflection on the appropriateness of Blackness and pushes for a reconsideration of the relationship between form and function, appropriate claim-making, article writing, and engagement with scholarship.

Aesthetics Politics: Negotiations of Black Reproduction in Brazil.

This article explores the role of aesthetics in the construction and perception of what constitutes healthy reproduction and reproductive practices. I draw on women's reproductive experiences and navigations within a racialized gendered hierarchy. Processes and procedures related to the governance and measurements of reproduction and reproductive health shape these navigations.

Importance of Communication and Relationships: Addressing Disparities in Hospitalizations for African-American Patients in Academic Primary Care.

Background: There are many interventions to facilitate seamless continuity of care for patients in transition from hospital back to primary care; however, disparities remain in readmission rates for vulnerable populations, especially African-Americans.

Objectives: We set out to investigate the association of race and ethnicity with 30-day readmission in our urban academic setting and to identify factors that could be leveraged in primary care to address disparities in hospitalizations.

Methods/approach: Using data originally collected for quality improvement purposes, we evaluated 30-day readmission rates for our primary care patients (January 1, 2013-September 30, 2014) by race and ethnicity, adjusting for demographic and clinical characteristics.

When Doctors Don't Tie: Hierarchical Medicalization, Reproduction, and Sterilization in Brazil.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among black women, medical personnel, and activists in Brazil, this article highlights the implications of hierarchical medicalization. I show that the prioritization of particular forms of medicalized contraception for women located differentially in society enables different relations, political positions, and mobility. Denial of a tubal ligation in favor of modern reversible contraceptives, in a context of inequitable distribution, can perpetuate social stratification.

Exploring the mental health of black men who have sex with men.

Current research indicates that black men who have sex with men (MSM) are disproportionately burdened by depressive distress and anxiety disorders as compared to their white gay and heterosexual counterparts. This study utilizes focus groups to qualitatively explore issues surrounding the mental health status of this population in an attempt to shed light on potential influencing and determinant factors. Twenty-two self-identified black, or multi-racial including black, MSM residing in Atlanta, Georgia participated in two focus groups--11 subjects each, respectively.