Metrics: What Counts in Global Health

Vincanne Adams

Published by Duke University Press 2016

Metrics

What Counts in Global Health

Vincanne Adams

In the series Critical Global Health: Evidence, Efficacy, Ethnography

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822374480

Overview
Contents

About this book

The contributors to Metrics use ethnographic evidence from around the globe to evaluate the accomplishments, limits, and the consequences of applying metrics to global health. Now the standard in measuring global health program success, metrics has far implications that extend beyond patients to the political and financial realms.

Author / Editor information

Vincanne Adams is Professor of Medical Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

Reviews

"[T]his volume is insightful, engaging and impressive. . . . I highly recommend this enlightening and ethnographically rich book. It is a must read for both medical anthropologists and global health practitioners, and would make an excellent addition to the reading list for graduate classes in medical anthropology or global health."

-- Lauren Wallace Anthropology Book Forum

"[T]his volume will hopefully help stimulate policymakers and researchers to think seriously about whether playing the numbers game is sufficient, either for patients or their clinicians."

-- Thomas Christie Williams LSE Review of Books

"Metrics is a thoughtful book that powerfully maps some of the problems that accompany the effort to ground GH in metrics. It is obligatory reading for anyone trying to understand contemporary world health."

-- Tobias Rees Bulletin of the History of Medicine

"Metrics offers a lucid, revealing, and sometimes unnerving tour of global health’s quantitative terrain. Its authors take pains to emphasize that they are not opposed to measurement. Rather, they argue for the need to recognize the limits of numbers and the continuing significance of other forms of knowing. From the perspective of medical anthropology this is a vital book."

-- Peter Redfield Medical Anthropology Quarterly

"Adams’ edited book makes a crucial contribution not only to those debates but also to the anthropology and sociology of evidence and measurement and to the social studies of science and medical humanities. Quite importantly, Metrics opens up a new field of inquiry and prompts us to think about how other kinds of metrics and ‘storied numbers’ are produced, experienced and valued and how they could be (re)imagined in the future."

-- Angela Marques Filipe Sociology of Health & Illness

"Taken together, this volume offers a useful primer on the role of metrics in shaping the work of global health actors at the macro, meso, and micro levels. The individual case studies offer theoretically and empirically rich examples that would be useful for scholars working in this area and for inclusion in an upper-level undergraduate class."

-- J. Lynn Gazley Contemporary Sociology

“Metrics is a call to preserve the spaces and experiences that exceed numerical data and counting, and to remain committed to methods and representations that might amplify them.... Metrics is crucial reading for those who eschew and embrace numbers alike.”

-- Cal Biruk PoLAR

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Introduction Vincanne Adams Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. METRICS OF THE GLOBAL SOVEREIGN. Numbers and Stories in Global Health Vincanne Adams Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	19
PART I. GETTING GOOD NUMBERS
2. ESTIMATING DEATH. A Close Reading of Maternal Mortality Metrics in Malawi Claire L. Wendland Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	57
3. THE OBLIGATION TO COUNT. The Politics of Monitoring Maternal Mortality in Nigeria Adeola Oni-Orisan Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	82
PART II. METRICS POLITICS
4. THE POWER OF DATA. Global Malaria Governance and the Senegalese Data Retention Strike Marlee Tichenor Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	105
5. NATIVE SOVEREIGNTY BY THE NUMBERS. The Metrics of Yup’ik Behavioral Health Programs Molly Hales Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	125
PART III. METRICS ECONOMICS
6. METRICS AND MARKET LOGICS OF GLOBAL HEALTH Susan L. Erikson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	147
7. WHEN GOOD WORKS COUNT Lily Walkover Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	163
PART IV. STORIED METRICS
8. WHEN NUMBERS AND STORIES COLLIDE. Randomized Controlled Trials and the Search for Ethnographic Fidelity in the Veterans Administration Carolyn Smith-Morris Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	181
9. THE TYRANNY OF THE WIDGET. An American Medical Aid Organization’s Struggles with Quantification Pierre Minn Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	203
Epilogue: What Counts in Good Global Health? Vincanne Adams Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225
References Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	231
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	253
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	255

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 288

eBook

Published: February 25, 2016
ISBN: 9780822374480