Episode 2: Adeola Oni-Orisan on Maternal Death Narratives

06/19/24 • 32 min

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Adeola Oni-Orisan. who is an Assistant Professor of Family and Community Medicine at UC-Davis. Dr. Oni-Orisan holds an MD from Harvard Medical School and a PhD in Medical Anthropology from UCSF and is an expert in community-centered research, qualitative research, critical race theory, Black feminist studies, and science and technology studies. She has conducted research on issues related to reproductive health, global health, development, religion, and informal sites of care in Nigeria, Zambia, and the United States. Her work on the production of statistics related to maternal mortality has been prominently featured in the wonderful edited volume by Vincanne Adams, Metrics: What Counts in Global Health and PJ Brown and Svea Closser’s Foundations of Global Health: An Interdisciplinary Reader. More recently, she’s published on COVID-19 and the political geography of racialization in San Francisco. Her recent article, published in Global Public Health -- “The Trouble with Maternal Death Narratives” -- critically examines how stories of women dying during childbirth have been used as a tool to mobilize support for global health interventions aimed at women in poor countries.

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Episode 1: Jallicia Jolly on Transnational Reproductive Justice Organizing

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This week's podcast features a conversation with Dr. Jallicia Jolly. Dr. Jolly is an Assistant Professor of American Studies and Black Studies at Amherst College, and a poet, public scholar, equity practitioner, and reproductive justice organizer. In the podcast, she discusses what led her to focus on the subject of HIV organizing and grassroots women's reproductive health in her work as a practitioner and a scholar concerned with transforming structures of power, advancing equity, and affirming health justice. She shares what aspects of research and ethnography are most meaningful to her, the people who have influenced and shaped her thinking, and inspiring advice she has for young scholars beginning their journey.

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Episode 3: Eduardo J. Gómez on Junk Food Politics

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In this episode, we have a conversation with Dr. Eduardo Gómez, Professor in the Department of Community and Population Health and Director of the Institute of Health Policy and Politics at Lehigh University. A political scientist by training, Professor Gómez' research focuses on the politics of global health policy, with a focus on emerging middle-income countries. He is the author of several books, and his most recent is titled Junk Food Politics: How Beverage and Fast Food Industries are Reshaping Emerging Economies (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023). In 2022, he led The Lancet’s first series on political science and global health and has served as co-editor for other major journal special issues.