Ugo Edu | University of California, Los Angeles (original) (raw)
Papers by Ugo Edu
Journal of General Internal Medicine, 2019
BACKGROUND: There are many interventions to facilitate seamless continuity of care for patients i... more BACKGROUND: There are many interventions to facilitate seamless continuity of care for patients in transition from hospital back to primary care; however, disparities remain in readmission rates for vulnerable populations, especially African-Americans. OBJECTIVES: We set out to investigate the association of race and ethnicity with 30-day readmission in our urban academic setting and to identify factors that could be leveraged in primary care to address disparities in hospitalizations. METHODS/APPROACH: Using data originally collected for quality improvement purposes, we evaluated 30-day readmission rates for our primary care patients (January 1, 2013-September 30, 2014) by race and ethnicity, adjusting for demographic and clinical characteristics. Then, using inductive and deductive methods, we coded semi-structured interviews with 24 African-American primary care patients who were discharged from the Medicine or Cardiology service at our tertiary care hospital during the study period. KEY RESULTS: African-Americans had the highest readmission rate (21.7%) and a higher adjusted odds of readmission (1.37; 95% CI 1.04-1.81) compared to Whites. Five major themes emerged as having potential to be leveraged in primary care to help prevent multiple hospitalizations: (1) dependable patient-physician relationships, (2) healthcare coordination across settings, (3) continuity with one primary care provider (PCP), (4) disease selfmanagement, and (5) trust in resident physicians. Participants also made several recommendations to keep patients like themselves from returning to the hospital: increased time to tell their story during their primary care visit, more direct patient-physician communication during the visit, and improved access between visits. CONCLUSIONS: While African-American patients in our practice experience higher rates of hospital readmissions than their White counterparts, they emphasize the significance of their PCP relationship and communication to enhance disease management and prevent hospitalizations. Ongoing efforts are needed to establish and implement best practice communication trainings for patients at increased risk of hospitalization, particularly for resident physicians.
Medical Anthropology Quarterly
Emerging from experimentations with form during our 2021 inaugural BFHSS Collaboratory, this arti... more Emerging from experimentations with form during our 2021 inaugural BFHSS Collaboratory, this article dabbles in redaction while examining logics of race and aesthetics embedded in how health is defined, measured, and depicted. I also examine logics structuring who is legible as a producer of knowledge, whose body is one from which knowledge is extracted, and who can be given access to population groups for study. Form in this article offers a reflection on the appropriateness of Blackness and pushes for a reconsideration of the relationship between form and function, appropriate claim‐making, article writing, and engagement with scholarship.
Journal of the National Medical Association, 2019
Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness, 2019
This article explores the role of aesthetics in the construction and perception of what constitut... more This article explores the role of aesthetics in the construction and perception of what constitutes healthy reproduction and reproductive practices. I draw on women’s reproductive experiences and navigations within a racialized gendered hierarchy. Processes and procedures related to the governance and measurements of reproduction and reproductive health shape these navigations. Focusing on Black women’s experiences, I analyze the ways in which values, sensibilities, and affect connected to particular appearances and arrangements influence reproductive decision-making, reproductive health, and family constructions – what I refer to as aesthetics politics.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among black women, medical personnel, and activists in Brazil, ... more Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among black women, medical personnel, and activists in Brazil, this article highlights the implications of hierarchical medicalization. I show that the prioritization of particular forms of medicalized contraception for women located differentially in society enables different relations, political positions, and mobility. Denial of a tubal ligation in favor of modern reversible contraceptives, in a context of inequitable distribution, can perpetuate social stratification. This work contributes to literature exploring the complexity of medicalization and its relationship with society via reproduction.
History of Anthropology Newsletter, 2017
Pondering the past and future of anthropology (re)presents a formidable and fascinating task, nec... more Pondering the past and future of anthropology (re)presents a formidable and fascinating task, necessitating a conception of what it has meant, and now means, to be human. That is, the future of life, “life itself,” and how anthropologists create and theorize these as concepts, becomes more complicated–and thus even more crucial as a quickly heating planet and political toxicity are transforming the terrain on which we think and act. As young scholar-activists, we ponder anthropology’s “problems” and “prospects” as entangled with political futures. What is the role of the (Western-trained) anthropologist who chooses “science as a vocation” (Weber 2004 [1917]) but also has an eye to the artistic, and considers the lines between “fieldwork” and “homework” (Williams 1995) to be rooted in the field’s colonial past?
We have an idea for philanthropists Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, who last sites in inland ... more We have an idea for philanthropists Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, who last sites in inland areas should not be overlooked in favour of megacities in eastern China that have a greater potential for property development. The administration and supervision of operations needs to be streamlined. Although 36government departments are involved in soil-pollution control, their respective responsibilities are still not fully defined or coordinated. Standardized regulations must be drawn up to aid communication among stakeholders. Soil and hydrogeological conditions vary enormously across China, calling for a range of different technologies and skills. International expertise and cooperation could help to address the scientific issues and develop efficient clean-up technologies. Changsheng Qu, Shui Wang Jiangsu Academy of Environmental Sciences, Nanjing, China. Peter Engelund Holm University of Copenhagen, Denmark.031202026@163.comSpecies loss: learn from health metricsThe inability to quantify which threats matter most across species and ecosystems is a problem for policymaking and resource allocation (see S.L. Maxwell etal. Nature 536, 143–145; 2016). Biodiversity conservation could learn from public-health metrics and go beyond simply counting the number of recorded threats to quantify the contribution of each one to species loss.Public-health priorities are set using disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), a measure of healthy years of life lost to a disease as a result of death or sickness. DALYs can be compared among diseases, regions or populations; summed to assess total disease impact; and used to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions (C. J. L. Murray etal. Lancet 386, 2145–2191; 2015). The absence of these key functions from existing Martian dance of fiction and factIn marking the H.G.Wells anniversary, you highlight what Carl Sagan dubbed the “dance” between science fiction and science fact (see www.nature.com/scifispecial).Wells’s The War of the Worlds saw the Martian invasion stopped in its tracks by Earth pathogens (S.J.James Nature 537, 162–164; 2016). Now, almost 120years after Wells’s novel was published, the Mars rover Curiosity may have to be diverted because of fears that Earth microbes on the craft could contaminate possible wet areas — a potential habitat for hypothetical Martian life (Nature 537, 145–146; 2016). Such symmetry.Jonathan Cowie Leicester, UK.www.concatenation.org/contact.html biodiversity risk assessments limits their usefulness (see, for example, the IUCN Red List). Although they are not without flaws, DALYs have led to fundamental changes in public health, for example by refocusing efforts on diseases that cause the most harm, such as malaria. They have also prompted reassessment of underlying threats that exacerbate illness, such as malnutrition. And they have highlighted areas in which funding exceeds the share of all DALYs, notably in breast cancer. The availability of an accessible metric, comparable across threats, has also contributed to new funding streams such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. A comparable metric is urgently needed for more precise analysis of biodiversity threats.Kathryn J. Fiorella Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA.Giovanni Rapacciuolo Stony Brook University, New York, USA. Christopher Trisos National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, Annapolis, Maryland, USA.kfiorella@gmail.commonth announced their first major investment in basic science: US$600million for a Biohub in San Francisco, California. They aspire to ‘advance human potential and promote equality’ (https://chanzuckerberg.com). As members of the Science FARE (Feminist Anti-Racist Equity) collective, we suggest that 5–7% of the Biohub’s health-research budget should be used to design and monitor goals of justice and equality from the outset. Otherwise, social inequalities could limit the project’s potential. Innovative social scientists will need to work with bench scientists, engineers and clinical researchers. Health research should include trained people from all social backgrounds and a variety of disciplines.The affordability of treatments and access to them is crucial, irrespective of class, gender, race or disabilities. Building equality into Biohub’s founding architecture will allow it to be tackled simultaneously with disease eradication, mitigating the uneven social distribution of health care in San Francisco’s Bay Area and beyond.Science FARE* University of California, Berkeley, USA.charis@berkeley.edu*On behalf of 6 correspondents (see go.nature.com/2drsnmf for full list).
The American Journal of Bioethics, 2016
In their article “Bioethicists Can and Should Contribute to Addressing Racism,” Danis, Wilson, an... more In their article “Bioethicists Can and Should Contribute
to Addressing Racism,” Danis, Wilson, and White
(2016) call for the field of bioethics to end its relative
silence on issues of race and racism and to engage issues
of police violence toward blacks with the urgency they
require. We applaud their call, including their suggested
interventions in the realms of scholarship, teaching,
ethics consultation, and more. Our enthusiastic support
of the article’s main themes also prompts our desire to
expand and shift the view of the “problem” to focus
more centrally on operations of power and the ways in
which bioethics as a field is implicated in this operation,
not only by its scant attention, but also by its institutionalization
and practices. Without such understandings,
any call to action regarding the injustices to which the
authors so skillfully draw our attention loses its urgency
and weight.
Journal of General Internal Medicine, 2019
BACKGROUND: There are many interventions to facilitate seamless continuity of care for patients i... more BACKGROUND: There are many interventions to facilitate seamless continuity of care for patients in transition from hospital back to primary care; however, disparities remain in readmission rates for vulnerable populations, especially African-Americans. OBJECTIVES: We set out to investigate the association of race and ethnicity with 30-day readmission in our urban academic setting and to identify factors that could be leveraged in primary care to address disparities in hospitalizations. METHODS/APPROACH: Using data originally collected for quality improvement purposes, we evaluated 30-day readmission rates for our primary care patients (January 1, 2013-September 30, 2014) by race and ethnicity, adjusting for demographic and clinical characteristics. Then, using inductive and deductive methods, we coded semi-structured interviews with 24 African-American primary care patients who were discharged from the Medicine or Cardiology service at our tertiary care hospital during the study period. KEY RESULTS: African-Americans had the highest readmission rate (21.7%) and a higher adjusted odds of readmission (1.37; 95% CI 1.04-1.81) compared to Whites. Five major themes emerged as having potential to be leveraged in primary care to help prevent multiple hospitalizations: (1) dependable patient-physician relationships, (2) healthcare coordination across settings, (3) continuity with one primary care provider (PCP), (4) disease selfmanagement, and (5) trust in resident physicians. Participants also made several recommendations to keep patients like themselves from returning to the hospital: increased time to tell their story during their primary care visit, more direct patient-physician communication during the visit, and improved access between visits. CONCLUSIONS: While African-American patients in our practice experience higher rates of hospital readmissions than their White counterparts, they emphasize the significance of their PCP relationship and communication to enhance disease management and prevent hospitalizations. Ongoing efforts are needed to establish and implement best practice communication trainings for patients at increased risk of hospitalization, particularly for resident physicians.
Medical Anthropology Quarterly
Emerging from experimentations with form during our 2021 inaugural BFHSS Collaboratory, this arti... more Emerging from experimentations with form during our 2021 inaugural BFHSS Collaboratory, this article dabbles in redaction while examining logics of race and aesthetics embedded in how health is defined, measured, and depicted. I also examine logics structuring who is legible as a producer of knowledge, whose body is one from which knowledge is extracted, and who can be given access to population groups for study. Form in this article offers a reflection on the appropriateness of Blackness and pushes for a reconsideration of the relationship between form and function, appropriate claim‐making, article writing, and engagement with scholarship.
Journal of the National Medical Association, 2019
Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness, 2019
This article explores the role of aesthetics in the construction and perception of what constitut... more This article explores the role of aesthetics in the construction and perception of what constitutes healthy reproduction and reproductive practices. I draw on women’s reproductive experiences and navigations within a racialized gendered hierarchy. Processes and procedures related to the governance and measurements of reproduction and reproductive health shape these navigations. Focusing on Black women’s experiences, I analyze the ways in which values, sensibilities, and affect connected to particular appearances and arrangements influence reproductive decision-making, reproductive health, and family constructions – what I refer to as aesthetics politics.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among black women, medical personnel, and activists in Brazil, ... more Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among black women, medical personnel, and activists in Brazil, this article highlights the implications of hierarchical medicalization. I show that the prioritization of particular forms of medicalized contraception for women located differentially in society enables different relations, political positions, and mobility. Denial of a tubal ligation in favor of modern reversible contraceptives, in a context of inequitable distribution, can perpetuate social stratification. This work contributes to literature exploring the complexity of medicalization and its relationship with society via reproduction.
History of Anthropology Newsletter, 2017
Pondering the past and future of anthropology (re)presents a formidable and fascinating task, nec... more Pondering the past and future of anthropology (re)presents a formidable and fascinating task, necessitating a conception of what it has meant, and now means, to be human. That is, the future of life, “life itself,” and how anthropologists create and theorize these as concepts, becomes more complicated–and thus even more crucial as a quickly heating planet and political toxicity are transforming the terrain on which we think and act. As young scholar-activists, we ponder anthropology’s “problems” and “prospects” as entangled with political futures. What is the role of the (Western-trained) anthropologist who chooses “science as a vocation” (Weber 2004 [1917]) but also has an eye to the artistic, and considers the lines between “fieldwork” and “homework” (Williams 1995) to be rooted in the field’s colonial past?
We have an idea for philanthropists Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, who last sites in inland ... more We have an idea for philanthropists Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, who last sites in inland areas should not be overlooked in favour of megacities in eastern China that have a greater potential for property development. The administration and supervision of operations needs to be streamlined. Although 36government departments are involved in soil-pollution control, their respective responsibilities are still not fully defined or coordinated. Standardized regulations must be drawn up to aid communication among stakeholders. Soil and hydrogeological conditions vary enormously across China, calling for a range of different technologies and skills. International expertise and cooperation could help to address the scientific issues and develop efficient clean-up technologies. Changsheng Qu, Shui Wang Jiangsu Academy of Environmental Sciences, Nanjing, China. Peter Engelund Holm University of Copenhagen, Denmark.031202026@163.comSpecies loss: learn from health metricsThe inability to quantify which threats matter most across species and ecosystems is a problem for policymaking and resource allocation (see S.L. Maxwell etal. Nature 536, 143–145; 2016). Biodiversity conservation could learn from public-health metrics and go beyond simply counting the number of recorded threats to quantify the contribution of each one to species loss.Public-health priorities are set using disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), a measure of healthy years of life lost to a disease as a result of death or sickness. DALYs can be compared among diseases, regions or populations; summed to assess total disease impact; and used to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions (C. J. L. Murray etal. Lancet 386, 2145–2191; 2015). The absence of these key functions from existing Martian dance of fiction and factIn marking the H.G.Wells anniversary, you highlight what Carl Sagan dubbed the “dance” between science fiction and science fact (see www.nature.com/scifispecial).Wells’s The War of the Worlds saw the Martian invasion stopped in its tracks by Earth pathogens (S.J.James Nature 537, 162–164; 2016). Now, almost 120years after Wells’s novel was published, the Mars rover Curiosity may have to be diverted because of fears that Earth microbes on the craft could contaminate possible wet areas — a potential habitat for hypothetical Martian life (Nature 537, 145–146; 2016). Such symmetry.Jonathan Cowie Leicester, UK.www.concatenation.org/contact.html biodiversity risk assessments limits their usefulness (see, for example, the IUCN Red List). Although they are not without flaws, DALYs have led to fundamental changes in public health, for example by refocusing efforts on diseases that cause the most harm, such as malaria. They have also prompted reassessment of underlying threats that exacerbate illness, such as malnutrition. And they have highlighted areas in which funding exceeds the share of all DALYs, notably in breast cancer. The availability of an accessible metric, comparable across threats, has also contributed to new funding streams such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. A comparable metric is urgently needed for more precise analysis of biodiversity threats.Kathryn J. Fiorella Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA.Giovanni Rapacciuolo Stony Brook University, New York, USA. Christopher Trisos National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, Annapolis, Maryland, USA.kfiorella@gmail.commonth announced their first major investment in basic science: US$600million for a Biohub in San Francisco, California. They aspire to ‘advance human potential and promote equality’ (https://chanzuckerberg.com). As members of the Science FARE (Feminist Anti-Racist Equity) collective, we suggest that 5–7% of the Biohub’s health-research budget should be used to design and monitor goals of justice and equality from the outset. Otherwise, social inequalities could limit the project’s potential. Innovative social scientists will need to work with bench scientists, engineers and clinical researchers. Health research should include trained people from all social backgrounds and a variety of disciplines.The affordability of treatments and access to them is crucial, irrespective of class, gender, race or disabilities. Building equality into Biohub’s founding architecture will allow it to be tackled simultaneously with disease eradication, mitigating the uneven social distribution of health care in San Francisco’s Bay Area and beyond.Science FARE* University of California, Berkeley, USA.charis@berkeley.edu*On behalf of 6 correspondents (see go.nature.com/2drsnmf for full list).
The American Journal of Bioethics, 2016
In their article “Bioethicists Can and Should Contribute to Addressing Racism,” Danis, Wilson, an... more In their article “Bioethicists Can and Should Contribute
to Addressing Racism,” Danis, Wilson, and White
(2016) call for the field of bioethics to end its relative
silence on issues of race and racism and to engage issues
of police violence toward blacks with the urgency they
require. We applaud their call, including their suggested
interventions in the realms of scholarship, teaching,
ethics consultation, and more. Our enthusiastic support
of the article’s main themes also prompts our desire to
expand and shift the view of the “problem” to focus
more centrally on operations of power and the ways in
which bioethics as a field is implicated in this operation,
not only by its scant attention, but also by its institutionalization
and practices. Without such understandings,
any call to action regarding the injustices to which the
authors so skillfully draw our attention loses its urgency
and weight.