Joan Paluzzi
Assistant Professor
jepaluzz@uncg.edu
PhD Anthropology (University of Pittsburgh)
I am a medical anthropologist with over twenty years of experience as a critical care nurse prior to obtaining my degree in anthropology. My work focuses on economic class, gender, and ethnicity and their intersections with health and access to healthcare. My work starts from the assumption that health (and therefore healthcare) are fundamental human rights. I demonstrate the manner in which healthcare systems reproduce the larger socio-economic hierarchies and complex relationships of the societies in which they are situated. I am particularly interested in the dynamics that surround the diagnosis, treatment, and social context of tuberculosis. My research seeks to contribute to the development of more equitable systems of healthcare through provision of universal primary care in highly impoverished settings. I have conducted ethnographic fieldwork in American Samoa, Chile, Peru, Venezuela, and the southern US.
Select Publications:
Paluzzi, J.E. 2007. Selling sickness/creating demand: direct-to-consumer-advertising of prescription drugs. In M. Singer and H. Baer (Editors) Killer Commodities. Publication: Spring 2008. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira
Ruxin J., J.E. Paluzzi, P.Wilson, Y. Tozan, M.Kruk, A. Teklehaimanot. 2005. Emerging consensus in HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and access to essential medicines. Lancet 2005, 365: 618-21
Paluzzi, J. Farmer, P. 2005. The wrong question. Development 48 (1)
UN Millennium Project. 2005 Lead Authors: Leach, B. J.Paluzzi, P. Munderi. Prescription for Development: Improving Access to Essential Medicines. Final Report of the United Nations Millennium Project. The Working Group on Access to Essential Medicines within Task Force Five: Infectious Diseases and Access to Essential Medicines.
UN Millennium Project. 2005. Lead Authors: Caines, K. and J. Paluzzi. Meeting the Millennium Development Goals: Reversing the Global Incidence of Tuberculosis. Final Report of the United Nations Millennium Project. The Working Group on Tuberculosis within Task Force Five: Infectious Diseases and Access to Essential Medicines. For release in January, 2005.
Paluzzi, J.E. 2004. "Primary health care since Alma Ata: Lost in the Bretton Woods?" In Unhealthy Health Policy: A Critical Medical Anthropology Examination, edited by A. Castro and M. Singer. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Paluzzi, J.E., 2004. A social disease/a social response: Lessons in tuberculosis from 1930s Chile. Social Science and Medicine, August, 2004, 59(4):763-773
