Cultural Epidemiology |
The Cultural Epidemiology unit advances an agenda for increasing access to health services, acceptance and demand for disease interventions, and promoting essential features of good mental health. Our research examines the social contexts of interventions and population behaviour, community health priorities and questions of whether or not people are willing and able to use proposed interventions. Working with WHO and African partners, we have designed studies in Zanzibar, Kenya and DR Congo to clarify the level and determinants of acceptance and demand for vaccines to prevent cholera. A multi-centred study of Access to Medicines in Africa and South Asia (AMASA) examines the production, supply and use of selected drugs for tuberculosis, malaria, depression, reproductive health and HIV/AIDS. Mental health research in India focuses on suicide, cultural psychiatry and community mental health. The stigma of epilepsy and other chronic conditions remains a cross-cutting interest.