Welcome to the blog about my research project, "Intercultural Communication and Pandemic Prevention."
I depart for the field on Nov.4. This first post is a reflection on the process of preparing to enter the field, and little bit of self-reflexive musing about the health practices in which I have had to engage before even getting on the plane.
My research aim is to study health and environmental communication. The first step, it seems, is to become a medical subject myself. As a "responsible" resident of a developed nation, who is lucky enough to have a good health insurance plan, I must embark on a vaccination and disease prevention odyssey weeks before I leave Seattle.
An enormous array of vaccines are available to me, and with insurance I don't have to pick and choose among them. Give me the works. It's all covered. Side effects of the cheapest anti-malarial too troublesome? I'll take the expensive one with the milder side effects. Two months is a long time to deal with those.
Several trips to REI have stocked up my supply of mosquito repellant (all the articles I read said to use DEET, so that's what I'll do). I have bug-resistant clothing, whose fabric is permeated with mosquito repellant. I have a good hat. Sun screen. Boots. Waterproof jacket (I live in Seattle, after all).
I have purchased a medical evacuation plan. Now, if anything seriously goes wrong I can be flown home. I know that my health insurance does, in fact, cover medical care delivered overseas. I am packing my own emergency medical kit.
In the midst of this preparation, all of which I have been told (and I believe) is absolutely necessary to keep me healthy and as safe as possible during my field work, I must also pause and reflect on the fact that almost every single step I have taken to protect myself from disease and parasites endemic to the region I will visit is completely out of reach for most local residents of that region.
My perception of the risks involved in this project is a cultural construct, in one sense, and also a very concrete reality. Life expectancy in the Republic of Congo is less than 60 years. My ability to protect myself against these risks is also a cultural construct and a concrete reality. I live in a major city, surrounded by medical resources, shielded from the direct costs of my preventative medical care by a good insurance plan. And it has been drilled into me since childhood that taking all necessary and possible protective steps is the proper thing to do in any situation. While I may have once or twice ignored that basic principle (most teenagers do...), I don't seriously question the underlying value of prevention. I would feel very uncomfortable to think I had done less than everything possible.
But the people with whom I am going to work, and study, do not have access to these privileges - the medical care, the vaccines and medicines, the protective gear and equipment. This unbalanced relationship will be part of my research environment, part of the framework in which I collect and analyze data about health communication in this setting. I need to reflect on this fact, and pay attention to the ways in which it affects my relationship with others, and with the subject of health communication.
