Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2015, Anthropology

This dissertation examines and explores the popular health landscape, or lay health beliefs and models, held by Maasai people in the Siana Plains of Southern Narok. Specifically it is an investigation of the most common illnesses identified by community members and how these illnesses and the accompanying practices and beliefs reflect and illustrate the community's perspectives on hygiene, or the practice of being and staying healthy. Local hygienic ideas of illness prevention and avoidance, represented in the way Maasai talk about common and significant health problems, are found to be shaped by the cosmological underpinnings of Maasai society through superficially inchoate “common sense” perspectives that embody the foundational premises shared across much of Maasai society. This dissertation employs ethnographic methods of participant observation and semi-structured, open-ended questions, agreement surveys, and free listing in four series of interviews. These interviews were conducted with 107 people in 76 interviews. Response frequency tables were generated from the 27 interviews with Maasai in the series that employed free listing. Findings demonstrate that the relationship the Maasai have with Enkai, the creator god, is both represented and reified in the language of the popular health sector through the metonymic symbols of olari, the rainy season, enkijebe, the cold wind, and with the specific disavowal of metaphysical presumption, which I refer to as “etiological agnosticism”. The explanatory model that emerges from this analysis is not merely descriptive, but represents a significant re-presentation of Maasai understandings of health and illness. This dissertation contributes to our understanding of the influence cosmological premises have on everyday perspectives that form a community's shared “common sense”, particularly in the sector of popular health. It contributes more broadly to development studies, African studies, and the ethnog (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Atwood Gaines PhD, MPH (Committee Chair); Lee Hoffer PhD (Committee Member); Vanessa Hildebrand PhD (Committee Member); Jonathan Sadowsky PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: African Studies; Health; Public Health; Religion; Sanitation

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2021, Leadership and Change

There has been recognition in a consistent and long-term way that the most complex health issues of our time cannot be solved by one sector alone. Actions of funders and new policy spanning the last two decades have successfully attracted a diversity of sectors into planning circles. Many multi-sector collaborations (MSCs) aiming to improve community health have the desire to include the voices of those with lived experience in collaborative efforts, but they are challenged by conditions that are inevitably disengaging because of continued power imbalances, excessive bureaucratic process, and lack of action for change. A collaboration operating in the Gorge region of Oregon offers insight on how to rise above these challenges to inclusively engage those with lived experience. The Gorge has earned national notoriety as a result of improved community health indicators and the structure for collaboration and engagement make it a positive outlier. This exploratory case study asked the central question of what shapes inclusive engagement of participants with lived or living experience in MSCs working towards community health improvement. Building off the assertion that improved community health outcomes in collaboratives require the inclusive engagement of participants who are most closely impacted by health issues, this study sought to precisely include the perceptions of these individuals most closely impacted. Results were derived from 15 participant interviews, researcher observations of engagement, and a review of publicly available materials. A striking alignment was found between the perceptions of the three different study participant types participating in the Gorge MSC which confirmed the presence of three interrelated domains and ten themes. The study offers insight into (a) conditions that nurture a culture of collaboration and empowerment; (b) the role formal sector participants play in equitably sharing power; (c) how power viewed through an empowerment fra (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Aqeel Tirmizi Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Elizabeth Holloway Ph.D. (Committee Member); Tom Wolff Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Health; Health Care; Public Health