CSDE Affiliates Dr. Susan Graham (Medicine and Global Health), Dr. Steven Goodreau (Anthropology), and CSDE Scientist Dr. Deven Hamilton recently received a grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID for their research, titled “WHO-recommended Periodic Presumptive Treatment versus Doxycycline Post-Exposure Prophylaxis for STI Control among Cisgender Men Who Have Sex with Men in Kenya“. Authors propose a randomized clinical trial with participants assigned to WHO-recommended periodic presumptive treatment (PPT) or doxycycline post-exposure prophylaxis (doxyPEP), compared to standard syndromic treatment. This work will provide critical data needed to inform guidelines and improve STI control among MSM in sub-Saharan Africa and other resource-limited settings, including modelled estimates of the health and economic impact of scaling up these two interventions on STI control among MSM and their partners in Kenya.

Other UW collaborators are Scott McClelland in Medicine, Monisha Sharma in Global Health, and S.O. Soge in Global Health. Graham’s co-PI is Dr. Eduard Sanders from the Aurum Institute, who is based in Kenya. Kenyan site PIs include Dr. Fredrick Otieno with Nyanza Reproductive Health Society in Kisumu and Dr. Joshua Kimani with Partners for Health & Development in Africa.

CSDE Affiliate Dr. Rawan Arar (Law, Societies, and Justice) authored a chapter with Dr. Kristine J. Ajrouch and Dr. Sylvia C. Nassar, titled “Contexts of Immigration and Diversity: Biopsychosocial Implications for Arab Americans” in the edited volume, Biopsychosocial Perspectives on Arab Americans. Their chapter focuses on contexts of emigration and reception to interrogate the refugee-migrant binary in a unique way, shifting scholarly attention away from a focus on state logics, discrimination at border crossings, or the impact of public opinion on the potential for reception. They argue that scholars and practitioners who are interested in examining health outcomes among Arab newcomers and Arab Americans should consider lived experiences beyond state-ascribed labels (i.e., “refugee,” “asylum seeker,” or “immigrant”).

CSDE Affiliate Dr. Daiki Hiramori (Global and Interdisciplinary Studies, Hosei University) recently published an article with colleagues in the Race Ethnicity and Education, titled “Critically quantitative: measuring community cultural wealth on surveys“. Their study explores the quantitative measurement of Community Cultural Wealth (CCW), an asset-based approach to understanding the experiences of students from systemically marginalized racial/ethnic groups. Grounded in critical race theory, CCW focuses on forms of capital utilized by marginalized populations that are often unrecognized/undervalued by traditional social science research. Most previous studies on CCW have relied on qualitative methods; authors argue that quantitative critical race theory, or ‘QuantCrit’, can complement those studies by statistically specifying assets possessed by students from marginalized populations as a step toward reimagining institutions that elevate their importance. This paper aims to develop a CCW scale to quantitatively explore the concept.

CSDE Affiliates Dr. Marlaine Figueroa Gray (Anthropology, UW), Dr. Janelle Taylor (Anthropology, University of Toronto), and CSDE Trainee Callie Freitag (Public Policy & Governance, UW) authored new research in the Journal of Aging Studies, titled “Expanding the ethnographic toolkit: Using medical documents to include kinless older adults living with dementia in qualitative research“. The article was lead-authored by Dr. Lily Shapiro (Anthropology, UW). Ethnographic research often excludes cognitively impaired older adults without close kin, in part because cognitive impairment raises questions about the ability to provide informed consent. This study used data from a longitudinal study to qualitatively examine the experience of people without close kin at dementia onset. Authors detail their methodology and discuss its limitations and potential. In conclusion, they argue that collaborative interdisciplinary research using existing, longitudinal research data and text from medical records deserves to be considered as a potentially useful addition to the ethnographic toolkit. This article is one of several from this study which sought to examine the circumstances and needs of older adults who participated in the Adult Changes in Thought (ACT) study at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute. The study was supported by a grant through the National Institute on Aging (NIA) (Grant no. R21AG058056-01), administered through CSDE.