Adrienne Strong

Medical anthropology, hospital ethnography, theories of care, pain care practices, and maternal mortality

I am a medical anthropologist and Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Florida and affiliate faculty with the Center for African Studies and the Center for Gender, Sexualities, and Women’s Studies Research, with a joint Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis, USA and the Universiteit van Amsterdam in the Netherlands. I have long studied maternal mortality and women's health in Tanzania, focusing on theories of care for pregnant women. In my new NSF funded research (2022-2025), I am examining the meanings and formation of pain care practices in Tanzania across multiple levels in two regions, including the national Ocean Road Cancer Institute and Tosamaganga District Hospital. The common threads between all of my projects are interests in theories of care, everyday ethics, hospital ethnography, bio bureaucracy and the expansion of biomedical care and power, and patient-provider interactions. I supervise Ph.D. students interested in maternal and reproductive health, hospital ethnography, and the anthropology of biomedicine in a variety of geographic locations. I will be on parental leave until the end of October 2023. If you are interested in applying to UF to work with me, please send me an email.

Before my current position, I was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow with Columbia University's Mailman School of Health, in the Averting Maternal Death and Disability (AMDD) Program in the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health and a Fellow at the Columbia Population Research Center.

My first book, winner of the 2021 Eileen Basker Memorial Prize from the Society for Medical Anthropology (SMA), Documenting Death: Maternal Mortality and the Ethics of Care in Tanzania, available from University of California Press November 3, 2020, focuses on the inner workings of a government regional referral hospital in Tanzania, examining how institutional structures related to hierarchy, bureaucracy, historical precedents, communication and other factors, may influence the capacity of the institution to provide effective maternal healthcare during times of obstetric crisis. My research focuses on biomedical healthcare providers and administrators, groups that are often overlooked in the context of medical anthropology in sub-Saharan Africa. I contextualize the hospital ethnography with interviews, participant observation, and focus group discussions in communities throughout the region, as well as through the use of primary archival sources from the colonial and post-independence eras. This is the first ethnography to examine the issue of maternal mortality in a low resource setting from this perspective and in the setting of a biomedical facility, complementing the existing work of anthropologists of reproduction who have worked at the community level.

I worked in the Rukwa Region for my PhD fieldwork, which I conducted from January 2014- August 2015. From September 2010 through July 2011, I conducted research on access to healthcare services during pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period in the Singida Region of Tanzania. For my postdoctoral research in 2017 and 2018 I conducted a project examining a birth companion pilot program in the Kigoma region of Tanzania, which focused on how companions impact the social dynamics of health center maternity wards and the care provided in those settings. This project also included an 80-question cultural consensus survey and analysis around the cultural domain of care and support for pregnant women.

This is my personal website, which includes updates on my research, collaborations, conference presentations and papers, publications, teaching, and critical responses to current events related to women's health and reproduction.

Mentions and Public Anthropology

Leah M. Ashe Prize for the Anthropology of Medically Induced Harm Honorable Mention 2022

Eileen Basker Memorial Prize 2021

ReproNetwork Adele E. Clarke Book Award Honorable Mention 2021

Paper Prize


Apr
21
12:00 PM12:00

Public presentation of dissertation research

Because I am defending my dissertation in Amsterdam, I will be giving a brief presentation of my work at Washington University so those not able to be present in Amsterdam can still see the culmination of my research. Following the brief (~30 minutes) presentation, I will take questions and comments and then we will enjoy cake and champagne to celebrate.

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Aug
28
to Jan 10

Based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands

From August 28th, 2016 through January 10th, 2017 I will be based in The Netherlands as I finish up my dissertation and coordinate the details of my joint degree with the Universiteit van Amsterdam. I am particularly looking forward to the opportunity to work with and learn from some new European colleagues. If you will be around, either in Amsterdam or elsewhere in Europe, I would love to hear from you!

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Sep
9
to Sep 11

MAGic 2015 Conference (Brighton, England)

http://www.easaonline.org/networks/medical/events/magic2015/theme.shtml

Held at the University of Sussex and put on by the European Association of Social Anthropologists Medical Anthropology Network.

This conference is exploring the intersections of anthropology and global health. I'll be giving a paper entitled "Ethnography as Mediator Between Communities and Maternal Healthcare Providers in Rukwa, Tanzania." 

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Nov
22
1:15 AM01:15

American Anthropological Association

I will be giving a presentation on the homebirth community of the greater St. Louis metropolitan area, based on research I did with this population in 2011 and 2012 for a class entitled "Cultures of Science and Technology."  I chose to conduct participant observation and interviews with this community as a response to the over medicalization of pregnancy and birth. I sought to explore ways in which this community was responding to the effects of technology and biomedical interventions in pregnancy and birth. 

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