ZOOM
Prof. Dr. Tine Hanrieder, LSE "Medicine from the Global South: The Diffusion of the Community Health Worker Model in the United States"
In the backyards of the American healthcare economy, a primary health workforce has emerged that is as idealistic as it is precarious. They call themselves community health workers or promotoras de salud (CHW/Ps), are mostly from minorities and female, and often work for charitable organizations, short-term demonstration projects, or for free. This talk describes the emergence of a workforce in the United States, which is usually associated with international development projects, but is increasingly valued by US health providers, researchers and policy makers. It focuses on the contentious professionalization of this workforce since the 1990s and thus on the moral and political economy of certifying CHW/Ps. Across the US, certificates have been heralded as a source of recognition and job stability, but are also fiercely resisted in the name of the community identity of CHW/Ps. This ongoing negotiation of the CHW/P identity constructs a global medical South in the United States, which is tailored to minority and migrant populations, rests on a “Southern epistemology” of community participation and popular education, and reproduces a racialized and gendered division of care and emotional labour in the US health economy.
