When Health and Culture Collide

MEDLIFE meeting features speaker, service opportunities

By JESSICA LUTON

jluton@uga.edu

A meeting tonight offers students a closer look at research and service at UGA. At 7:30 p.m., at the Zell B. Miller Learning Center in room 214, a meeting for the UGA chapter of the student organization MEDLIFE will feature a lecture from UGA Anthropology professor Susan Tanner. The event is of interest to any student interested in the ways in which culture affects health.

Tonight, at the Zell B. Miller Learning Center, the UGA chapter of MEDLIFE will be holding a meeting, featuring a speaker that does research on the intersection of culture and health.

MEDLIFE, a service organization on campus dedicated to improving the quality of life of impoverished people through medicine, education and development, helps students find ways to participate in service both locally and abroad.

Through medical trips to communities in South America, fundraisers for development projects in those communities and even local volunteer work for nonprofit organizations in Athens, MEDLIFE gives students an opportunity to make a difference on the ground floor level.

According to the UGA MEDLIFE Facebook page:

We are a service organization dedicated to freeing the poor from the burdens of disease and poverty, both here in Athens and abroad in Latin America.

Susan Tanner, an anthropology researcher and professor at UGA, will be featured as the lecturer at tonight’s lecture.  As a biological and medical anthropologist, Tanner’s research focuses on “understanding how relatively rapid economic and cultural changes influence human biology and health.”

“Recently, I have also become interested in examining how stressful early childhood environments “get under the skin” and generate life-long consequences,” she said.

Her research has focused on health disparities in South America, most recently, and tonight’s lecture will focus on that research.

“At the MEDLIFE event, I will be discussing my research in lowland Bolivia and changes in general health that we have witnessed over the past decade,” said Tanner. “I will discuss shifts in how people manage common infectious diseases and the potential for increasing rates of over-nutrition and associated illnesses. Students who are interested in South America, medical anthropology, or nutrition should find the topic interesting.”

Tanner’s classes include Human Adaptation, Health, Biology, and Culture: Introduction to Medical Anthropology, and other general anthropology courses. Interested in learning more about the field of anthropology? Visit http://anthropology.uga.edu/.

Interested in joining the UGA MEDLIFE organization? Check them out on Facebook, email them at medlife.uga@gmail.com or visit the national MEDLIFE website at http://www.medlifeweb.org/.

During the month of October, MEDLIFE is holding the 2^nd annual “Zombie 5K,” as well as a blood drive later at Memorial Hall. Sound like your calling? Check out tonight’s meeting and get involved with this unique organization.