Archive: Emily Mendenhall
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“On Symbols and Scripts: The Politics of the American COVID-19 Response”
Emily Mendenhall and her co-authors argue that, to unravel the American COVID-19 crisis —and to craft effective responses—, a more sophisticated understanding of the political culture of public health crises is needed. According to the researchers, the social processes of meaning-making help explain the evolution of increasingly partisan public health discourse regarding topics like masking and institutional trust. They consider how and why certain issues gain political valence, and what opportunities certain acts of politicization provide in shifting public discourse.
Category: Scholarship
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Georgetown Now: A Conversation with Georgetown President John J. DeGioia featuring Emily Mendenhall
Conversation between Georgetown President John J. DeGioia and Emily Mendenhall.
Category: Past events
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“A Spectrum of (Dis)Belief: Coronavirus Frames in a Rural Midwestern Town in the United States”
Emily Mendenhall and her co-authors investigate how society in rural America reacted to the coronavirus outbreaks of 2020. Without government COVID-19 mandates, conflicting moral beliefs divided American communities. Social fragmentation, based on conflicting values, led to an incomplete pandemic response in the absence of government mandates, opening the floodgates to coronavirus.
Category: Scholarship
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“’Thinking Too Much’: A Systematic Review of the Idiom of Distress in Sub-Saharan Africa”
In this systematic review, Emily Mendenhall and her co-authors take a look at the idiom “thinking too much”. This idiom is employed in cultural settings worldwide to express feelings of emotional and cognitive disquiet with psychological, physical, and social consequences on people’s well-being and daily functioning. The researchers analyze how, where, and among whom this idiom is used within varied Sub-Saharan African contexts.
Category: Scholarship
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Everybody Hates Me: Let’s Talk About Stigma Podcast: Dr. Emily Mendenhall, Stigma, Syndemics and Diabetes
Emily Mendenhall discusses with host Dr. Carmen Logie the concept of syndemic, based on her global research on diabetes, HIV, violence, depression and trauma.
Categories: Media, Past events
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“The COVID-19 Syndemic Is Not Global: Context Matters”
In this publication, Emily Mendenhall argues that, before defining a disease like COVID-19 as a syndemic, we need to look at the context first.
Category: Scholarship
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“Evaluating the Mental Health Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Perceived Risk of COVID-19 Infection and Childhood Trauma Predict Adult Depressive Symptoms in Urban South Africa”
Emily Mendenhall, Andrew Wooyoung Kim and Tawanda Nyengerai evaluate the mental health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in Soweto, a major township in South Africa, a society where one in three individuals develops a psychiatric disorder during their life.
Category: Scholarship
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“Metabolic Reflections: Blurring the Line between Trauma and Diabetes”
Emily Mendenhall argues for clinical studies of diabetes to recognize the impacts of chronic stress and trauma on metabolism. In her anthropological research, she has identified how lines between trauma and diabetes are blurred and violence and subjugation may irreversibly impact metabolism, even across generations. Thus, changes to diet and exercise alone will not solve the global and local undercurrents of the diabetes epidemic.
Category: Scholarship
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“How an Iowa Summer Resort Region Became a COVID-19 Hot Spot”, Emily Mendenhall Writes about her Research in Vox
Drawing on her research about the COVID-19 response in the Iowa Great Lakes region, Emily Mendenhall writes about the high number of cases and people’s reluctance to wear masks, showing how the deep conflicts around the coronavirus in the region reflect broader friction across the country.
Category: Media
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“America Should Prepare for a Double Pandemic”, The Atlantic Explores Emily Mendenhall’s Research
On its coverage of America’s need to prepare for new disease outbreaks, The Atlantic highlights Emily Mendenhall’s research about syndemics and the influence that every aspect of society has on public health.
Category: Media