Browsing by Subject "Health Policy"

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    The Rhetorical Making Of An Illness: Medical Refusal, Trope, And Improvisation In A Somali Women'S Health Center
    (2020-05) Campeau, Kari
    This ethnography examines the ways that individuals and communities come to understand autism, specifically, and health and illness, more broadly, and how these understandings influence medical decision-making. This study, developed in partnership with a Somali women's health center, asks how Somali parents understand autism, use services, and navigate divides between biomedical and other forms of care. To do so, I explore and rhetorically analyze three sites of health-related participation: 1.) public health communication outreach during the 2017 measles outbreak in Minnesota. 2.) the provision of a person-centered pilot grant to Somali families with children with autism, and 3.) alternative healthcare relationships and practices grounded in an understanding of autism as caused by imbalances in the microbiome. I offer three concepts--the situated refusal, bureaucratic literacy, and diagnosis as rhetorical trope--that can theorize health decision-making and can inform policy initiatives toward more accessible medical and social service procedures.