Joan E. Paluzzi
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.