B. Brenton - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Drafts by B. Brenton

Addressing public health nutrition vulnerabilities and resiliency in displaced United States urba... more Addressing public health nutrition vulnerabilities and resiliency in displaced United States urban populations requires a livelihood model that places food insecurity and health disparity synergisms at its core. It also necessitates the integration of a rights-based and life-course approach for understanding risk and resiliency. This chapter will review specific field-based examples from displaced urban populations to highlight challenges for applied community-based interventions. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork with women who are primary caregivers and their children living in transitional housing in New York City, an analysis is provided of how opportunities and constraints can shape their agency in responding to and confronting food security risk. Understanding the coping strategies utilized and the expressions of resiliency can be realized in these populations for implementing effective public health nutrition interventions.

Papers by B. Brenton

Current Developments in Nutrition, 2021

ABSTRACTBackgroundThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic profoundly affected food syste... more ABSTRACTBackgroundThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic profoundly affected food systems including food security. Understanding how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted food security is important to provide support and identify long-term impacts and needs.ObjectiveThe National Food Access and COVID research Team (NFACT) was formed to assess food security over different US study sites throughout the pandemic, using common instruments and measurements. This study presents results from 18 study sites across 15 states and nationally over the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsA validated survey instrument was developed and implemented in whole or part through an online survey of adults across the sites throughout the first year of the pandemic, representing 22 separate surveys. Sampling methods for each study site were convenience, representative, or high-risk targeted. Food security was measured using the USDA 6-item module. Food security prevalence was analyzed using ANOV...

On independent, temporally staggered, yet somehow parallel paths, our collective ethnographic fie... more On independent, temporally staggered, yet somehow parallel paths, our collective ethnographic fieldwork has taken us over the years across the tall and short grasses of the central and eastern plains through the dry dessert plateaus of the Southwest, culminating into a recent, joint venture into the lush high jungle of the Ecuadorian Amazon with a special opportunity to work with indigenous Shuar communities. As space folds and time curves, Barry and I have both worked with American Indian communities for our dissertation work in the 1990s and 2010s, respectively. Within the indigenous context, I have worked with Ojibwa, Potawatomi, Navajo, and Pueblo communities, and Barry has worked with Hopi communities for our respective dissertations. My experiences have spanned Anishinaabe harvest feasts, powwows, drum ceremonies and rituals and chronic disease prevention health programs in tribal schools and communities in the Midwest to Pueblo community gardening and school programs in the Southwest. Barry's experiences have encompassed ritual dance performances, feast celebrations, and farming among the Hopi to powwows and tribal casinos from California to Connecticut. Being the two anthropologists and faculty at St. John's University having the rare commonality of working with American Indians brought with it ongoing conversations about indigeneity, food, culture, and health. It is through these conversations over nearly three years that our growing interest in writing a piece on indigenous food cults came about. As part of this edited volume on food cults, we discuss our experiences in the field primarily focusing upon the North American Indian context. In this chapter, we argue that indigenous underlying foodways and related belief systems are actively redefined and realized by communities as products of their own organic experience of multiple waves of traumatic losses and the resulting embodiment of social devastations. While we take a critical medical anthropological perspective, our discussion in this chapter focuses on the importance of meaning-making and terminology usage by American Indian communities for their foodways, foods, and identity.

Addressing public health nutrition vulnerabilities and resiliency in displaced United States urba... more Addressing public health nutrition vulnerabilities and resiliency in displaced United States urban populations requires a livelihood model that places food insecurity and health disparity synergisms at its core. It also necessitates the integration of a rights-based and life-course approach for understanding risk and resiliency. This chapter will review specific field-based examples from displaced urban populations to highlight challenges for applied community-based interventions. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork with women who are primary caregivers and their children living in transitional housing in New York City, an analysis is provided of how opportunities and constraints can shape their agency in responding to and confronting food security risk. Understanding the coping strategies utilized and the expressions of resiliency can be realized in these populations for implementing effective public health nutrition interventions.

Anthropology News, 2002

Wiley Online Library. Anthropology NewsVolume 43, Issue 5, Article first published online: 7 JUL ... more Wiley Online Library. Anthropology NewsVolume 43, Issue 5, Article first published online: 7 JUL 2009. ...

Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 1994

This article is not included in your organization's subscription. However, you may be able t... more This article is not included in your organization's subscription. However, you may be able to access this article under your organization's agreement with Elsevier. ... Objective The purpose of this study was to evaluate the diets of 96 Hopi fifth-and sixth-grade students on the Hopi ...

Addressing public health nutrition vulnerabilities and resiliency in displaced United States urba... more Addressing public health nutrition vulnerabilities and resiliency in displaced United States urban populations requires a livelihood model that places food insecurity and health disparity synergisms at its core. It also necessitates the integration of a rights-based and life-course approach for understanding risk and resiliency. This chapter will review specific field-based examples from displaced urban populations to highlight challenges for applied community-based interventions. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork with women who are primary caregivers and their children living in transitional housing in New York City, an analysis is provided of how opportunities and constraints can shape their agency in responding to and confronting food security risk. Understanding the coping strategies utilized and the expressions of resiliency can be realized in these populations for implementing effective public health nutrition interventions.

Current Developments in Nutrition, 2021

ABSTRACTBackgroundThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic profoundly affected food syste... more ABSTRACTBackgroundThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic profoundly affected food systems including food security. Understanding how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted food security is important to provide support and identify long-term impacts and needs.ObjectiveThe National Food Access and COVID research Team (NFACT) was formed to assess food security over different US study sites throughout the pandemic, using common instruments and measurements. This study presents results from 18 study sites across 15 states and nationally over the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsA validated survey instrument was developed and implemented in whole or part through an online survey of adults across the sites throughout the first year of the pandemic, representing 22 separate surveys. Sampling methods for each study site were convenience, representative, or high-risk targeted. Food security was measured using the USDA 6-item module. Food security prevalence was analyzed using ANOV...

On independent, temporally staggered, yet somehow parallel paths, our collective ethnographic fie... more On independent, temporally staggered, yet somehow parallel paths, our collective ethnographic fieldwork has taken us over the years across the tall and short grasses of the central and eastern plains through the dry dessert plateaus of the Southwest, culminating into a recent, joint venture into the lush high jungle of the Ecuadorian Amazon with a special opportunity to work with indigenous Shuar communities. As space folds and time curves, Barry and I have both worked with American Indian communities for our dissertation work in the 1990s and 2010s, respectively. Within the indigenous context, I have worked with Ojibwa, Potawatomi, Navajo, and Pueblo communities, and Barry has worked with Hopi communities for our respective dissertations. My experiences have spanned Anishinaabe harvest feasts, powwows, drum ceremonies and rituals and chronic disease prevention health programs in tribal schools and communities in the Midwest to Pueblo community gardening and school programs in the Southwest. Barry's experiences have encompassed ritual dance performances, feast celebrations, and farming among the Hopi to powwows and tribal casinos from California to Connecticut. Being the two anthropologists and faculty at St. John's University having the rare commonality of working with American Indians brought with it ongoing conversations about indigeneity, food, culture, and health. It is through these conversations over nearly three years that our growing interest in writing a piece on indigenous food cults came about. As part of this edited volume on food cults, we discuss our experiences in the field primarily focusing upon the North American Indian context. In this chapter, we argue that indigenous underlying foodways and related belief systems are actively redefined and realized by communities as products of their own organic experience of multiple waves of traumatic losses and the resulting embodiment of social devastations. While we take a critical medical anthropological perspective, our discussion in this chapter focuses on the importance of meaning-making and terminology usage by American Indian communities for their foodways, foods, and identity.

Addressing public health nutrition vulnerabilities and resiliency in displaced United States urba... more Addressing public health nutrition vulnerabilities and resiliency in displaced United States urban populations requires a livelihood model that places food insecurity and health disparity synergisms at its core. It also necessitates the integration of a rights-based and life-course approach for understanding risk and resiliency. This chapter will review specific field-based examples from displaced urban populations to highlight challenges for applied community-based interventions. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork with women who are primary caregivers and their children living in transitional housing in New York City, an analysis is provided of how opportunities and constraints can shape their agency in responding to and confronting food security risk. Understanding the coping strategies utilized and the expressions of resiliency can be realized in these populations for implementing effective public health nutrition interventions.

Anthropology News, 2002

Wiley Online Library. Anthropology NewsVolume 43, Issue 5, Article first published online: 7 JUL ... more Wiley Online Library. Anthropology NewsVolume 43, Issue 5, Article first published online: 7 JUL 2009. ...

Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 1994

This article is not included in your organization's subscription. However, you may be able t... more This article is not included in your organization's subscription. However, you may be able to access this article under your organization's agreement with Elsevier. ... Objective The purpose of this study was to evaluate the diets of 96 Hopi fifth-and sixth-grade students on the Hopi ...