This document outlines a 3-stage final project assignment for a course on medical anthropology. It involves conducting: (1) a rapid ethnographic assessment of health in one's own household, (2) developing a health intervention based on issues identified, and (3) creating an evaluation plan for the intervention. Students are provided guidelines for each stage and assessed based on a grading rubric focusing on comprehensively addressing the objectives of each stage. The project aims to demonstrate how culture influences health and how anthropological perspectives can be applied to health issues.

1. ASSIGNMENT III: FINAL PROJECT (3-stages)
ETHNOGRAPHIC AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT (10-15 total
pages)
This assignment will help you to achieve the following Course
Objectives:
- describe the role of culture in health, illness, and healing and
medical anthropology's contributions to individual and public
health in domestic and international contexts
- describe the local and global political, social, and economic
factors that influence individual and public health to shape
programs and policies
- apply the perspectives and methods of anthropology to
promote individual and public health in domestic and
international contexts
Like the Literature Review and Research Paper, the
ETHNOGRAPHIC PROJECT is an “authentic assessment.” And
like the previous two assignments, whenever necessary please
follow proper APA citation formatting. The ETHNOGRAPHIC
PROJECT asks you to complete tasks (albeit in a much
abbreviated format) that anthropologists actually perform. The
point of the project is to make it very clear to students how
everyone’s beliefs and behaviors are culturally constructed and
how the historical, social, political, and economic contexts in
which people live or visit shape/influence who stays
well/healthy, who gets sick, what they suffer, what their
experience of illness is, how they are treated, who gets
better/heals, and who does not.
The ETHNOGRAPHIC PROJECT is worth a total of 45% of
your overall grade. Each of the
THREE (3) STAGES
of this project will count for 15% of your overall grade: See the
Course Schedule for Due Dates.
1) Ethnographic Assessment
Intervention

2. Development
Intervention
Evaluation
Plan
*The
ETHNOGRAPHIC
PROJECT
(all 3 stages) should
total
around 10-15 pages*
I will award points based on my assessment of how well you
followed the instructions and met the specified requirements for
each assignment, your mastery of the material, and the quality
of your writing. (Spelling and grammar count in the final
project).
*PRIVACY CONCERNS* for Ethnographic Project
The Ethnographic Project asks you to discuss health-related
issues you are interested in or concerned about and your own
and your household members’ personal health and illness
related ideas, behaviors, and concerns as well as the personal
environments in which you live.
You should not, however, disclose or discuss any information
that you wish to keep private.
This project is for the instructor’s eyes only – it is not to be
submitted in any public classroom areas – and it will not be
used for any other purpose other than to assess your mastery of
the material in this course.
You
are in control of the information you include. If anyone objects
to this assignment, however, please email me at:

3. [email protected]
The Ethnographic Project will help students achieve the
following:
(1) Describe the history, scope, primary interests and research
methods of medical anthropology (2) Identify various
theoretical approaches anthropologists have used to study
health, illness, and the body (3) Explain how culture influences
health and healing practices, and views on disease, life and
death, and (4) Describe how applied medical anthropology
contributes to human wellness in the United States and globally.
In this project, students will conduct a
(Stage 1) Rapid Ethnographic Assessment
of the “production of health” in the student’s own household,
create a
(Stage 2) Health/Wellness-related Intervention
that addresses some issue uncovered in the ethnographic
assessment, and
(Stage 3) develop an Intervention Evaluation Plan
.
*NOTE* The intervention part of this project is not “for real”
(unless you want it to be) and it can be as creative as you like.
For example, if someone in your household suffers from chronic
pain, from your reading about how people from different
cultural worlds cope with chronic pain, you might design an
intervention that incorporates heat and ice, pain medications,
acupuncture, meditation, psychotherapy, and shamanic healing.
**START THINKING ABOUT THIS PROJECT AS SOON AS
THE CLASS BEGINS**
The project
must
include: (Again, only include information you’re comfortable
discussing)
STAGE 1
An inventory of health/illness related products in the household
(e.g., prescription medications, over the counter medications,

4. medical devices, any foods or supplements eaten for health
reasons, books, – anything you consider “health or illness
related”). This inventory should not be focused on one
illness/disorder/health issue. It should be all-inclusive.
A record of health-seeking behavior exhibited by household
Again, this should not relate to one problem – it should be all-
inclusive.
A record of health/illness-related conversations with others as
close to verbatim as Start to notice and record conversations as
soon as they happen.
A list of resources that have an impact on your household’s
heath/illness-related ideas and behaviors and household health
status (e.g., time, health insurance, social support). Again, this
should
not
focus on only one illness/problem, such as the illness episode.
The list should be comprehensive. What do you have available
to you (or not) that affects your household's health in any way?
Features of your community, state, national, and global
environments that you think have an impact on your
household’s heath/illness-related ideas and behaviors and
household health status (e.g., national health insurance,
industrial pollution, infectious agents, policies). Again,
do not
focus on one This should be comprehensive. I want to see that
you understand how health, illness, and healing are related to
people's total environments.
A comprehensive description of
at least
ONE (1) illness episode occurring in the household currently or
during the previous six months (it can be very ordinary, like a
cold or a headache), including information about the decisions
that were made, how decisions were made, who made the
decisions, what decision-making says about the power
relationships within your household,
Your own and any other relevant person's explanatory models of

5. the illness
STAGE 2
An
intervention
that addresses
at least one
health-related issue in your household that you identified in
your ethnographic (An intervention is some kind of action plan
to eliminate or alleviate a problem.) This issue DOES NOT have
to be the same issue discussed in component “f” above.
Now is the time to focus on
one
issue.
Try to find articles about your issue in the anthropology
journals listed in the description of the Literature Review above
or use any of our course readings that might deal with your
issue to get ideas or to better understand how this issue may be
experienced and dealt with in different cultural contexts.
Ideas about the body, the person, health, illness, treatment, that
underlie your intervention. These ideas should explain why you
think your intervention will work. Think about your
understandings and beliefs about how the body works, why
"trouble" starts, what's needed to fix it and why, etc. Again, if
you can find articles about your issue in anthropology journals
or if your issue has been discussed in any of our course
readings, compare your ideas with those of others.
Features of the social, political, and economic environment and
available/unavailable resources that will either support or
impede implementing your The point of this is to help you
understand how "no man is an island" - your health and well-
being are intricately connected to the context in which you live,
to your immediate and larger social worlds.
Possible unintended consequences (either positive or negative)
of your Most interventions have unintended consequences. For
example, if you institute an exercise regimen for one person in

6. the household, s/he may injure him/herself or, on the other
hand, an intervention introduced to help one person in your
household may spill over to other members of the household and
their health may improve though they were not the "target" of
the intervention.
STAGE 3
A
plan for evaluating
your How will you know if it is successful (including your
definition of "success"). Make this plan detailed. What are your
long-term goals and shorter-term objectives of your
intervention? What is your time frame? How will you measure
whether you have achieved these goals and objectives?
Finally, choose a setting other than your own that we have read
about in one of our readings (e.g., Haiti, Botswana, Japan,
Jamaica, ). How do you think the specific problem and
intervention you have discussed/designed in this project and
your experience of the problem and intervention would differ if
you lived in this other setting instead of the setting in which
you actually live? How would the resources you would have
available to you affect this, assuming you were a member of the
same economic "class" you are actually a member of?
**
Students
must
also explain the ideas (theories)
about
the
body,
wellness,
illness, healing, and illness that underlie the intervention

7. (s) they have chosen and the
features
of
the physical, political, social, and economic environment
that will either facilitate or impede the implementation of the
intervention (e.g., health insurance does not cover
psychotherapy, the physical labor required by the person’s job
is the source of the pain, or (happily) a shaman lives next door
and refuses payment for his services).**
Simply go down the list of all the required components
in
order
and do what each tells you to do. Please include a heading for
each component to make it easier for me to determine which
component you're addressing.
Your project is already organized for you - you don't have to
add any additional sections such as an Introduction. Just give
me what I ask for and
don't
make this more complicated than it is
.
This is not rocket science. But it does require close reading and
following of instructions and attention to detail.
Your completed project should fully address all required
components and demonstrate to me that you understand all the
course concepts. It should be around
10-15 double-spaced pages.
The GRADING RUBRIC for the ethnographic project is posted
below. You should pay close attention to the grading rubric
because it explains what is expected for each grade. Use it as a
checklist to make sure you have included all the required
components of the project and do them in order. You can use a
list format for some components and a narrative format for
others, whichever is appropriate.

8. Again, *
do not make this more complicated than it is
.*
If I ask you for a list, give me a list. If I ask you to record a
conversation, tell me the speaker and what he or she said as
close to verbatim as you can. If you have questions please email
me at:
[email protected]
Please also post questions that you think are of general interest
in the “Cyber Café” conference thread. If I do not hear from
you, I will assume that all of the instructions are clear and that
you understand them.
Ethnographic Project Grading Rubric
**Please Note** Pay close attention to the descriptions of the
grade ranges below. Take “Inventory,” for example. Listing 25
household objects is the
minimum
you need to receive a grade at the lower end of the “A to B”
range. In other words, 25 listed objects will get you a “B-“
since it is the minimum required for the grade range “A-B.”
Consequently, if you want an “A” you will obviously need to
list (significantly) more than 25 objects. This same principle
applies to all the other criteria: Health-seeking behaviors,
conversations, etc.
A = 40.5 – 45 pts. C = 31.5 – 35.5
pts. F = 0 pts.
B = 36 – 40 pts. D = 27 – 31 pts.
15-
12
pts.

9. (A
or
B)
11.9-10.5 p
ts.
(C)
10.49-0
pts.
(D
or
F)
Inventory
Listed
at
least
25 household objects, etc. related in some way to health or
illness from different areas of household
Listed 15-24 objects
Listed <= 14 objects or did not submit project
Health-seeking Behavior
Identified
at
least
20 health-seeking behaviors performed by household members
Identified 10-19 behaviors
Listed <= 9 behaviors or did not submit project
Conversations
Demonstrated

10. Demonstrated
Did not accurately
excellent
ability to record and identify themes and patterns in the
conversations held about the illness
average/acceptable abilities to record and analyze conversations
record or analyze conversations – unable to recognize themes or
patterns or did not submit project
Illness episode Description
Demonstrated
excellent
observational skills by thoroughly and accurately describing
all aspects of the illness episode including treatments and other
health- seeking behaviors, interactions with others, resources
used, etc.
Demonstrated acceptable/average observational skills
Description was “thin” – not many details provided or did not
submit project
Resources
Identified
at
least
20 resources either available or unavailable to the household
members that affected household
health/illness
Identified 10-19 resources
Identified
Environmental Features
Demonstrated
excellent
understanding of ecological/evolutionary and CMA theoretical
perspectives in discussion of environmental influences on

11. household health
Demonstrated average/acceptable understanding
Did not demonstrate understanding of these two theoretical
perspectives or did not submit project
Intervention
Developed a
creative
intervention for any issue that you identified in your
ethnography that
incorporated
what has been learned in the course. This issue can be, but
does NOT have to be related to the illness episode you
described.
Developed an intervention plan that related somewhat to what
has been learned in the
course
Intervention plan did not relate to what has been learned in the
course or did not submit project
Culturally Constructed Ideas
Demonstrated
excellent
ability to identify cultural ideas
about the body, person, health, illness, treatment, etc. that
underlie your intervention. What do you think what you want to
do will work?
Demonstrated adequate ability to identify cultural themes and
underlying ideas
Demonstrated poor or no ability to identify cultural themes and
underlying ideas or did not submit project
Environment

12. Excellent
discussion of the physical, political, social, and economic
environment that will either facilitate or impede the
implementation of the intervention
Adequate discussion of the physical, political, social, and
economic
environment that will either facilitate or impede the
implementation of the intervention
Inadequate discussion of the physical, political, social, and
economic environment that will either facilitate or impede the
implementation of the intervention or did not submit project
Unintended Consequences
Excellent
discussion of possible unintended consequences of your
intervention
Adequate discussion of unintended consequences
Inadequate discussion of unintended consequences or
did not submit project
Evaluation Plan
Excellent
and comprehensive evaluation plan including reasonable
objectives, outcome measures, and other assessments that relate
well to the intervention. Make sure you measure what you hope
to achieve in your intervention.
Adequate evaluation plan
Inadequate evaluation plan that does not include objectives,
outcome measures; in
other words, a plan that does not actually evaluate the
intervention or did not submit project
Comparison to Other Setting
Demonstrated

13. comprehensive
knowledge
of own setting and appropriately compared its resources and
challenges to those of another setting
Demonstrated adequate knowledge of own setting and
appropriately compared its resources and challenges to those of
another setting
Inadequate demonstration of knowledge of own setting and
inadequate comparison or did not submit project
Writing Quality
No or less than 3
3-5 errors in spelling
More than 5
errors in spelling or
or grammar
errors in spelling
grammar including
including incomplete
or grammar
incomplete sentences
sentences
including
incomplete
sentences