Wole enjoys Searanch, California, in the few days before turning three in August 2010.

a draft digital story about cancer

DRAFT video about Hijras, a third gender community excluded from the dominant culture in Nellore city, Andhra Pradesh, India. The video illuminates Hijras’ opinions of their underserved and underrepresented status within India’s health and social system. Applying a critical visual anthropology and health disparities framework, “Nellore” features Hijras’ views of disenfranchisement, gender transitionality, and sexual practices.

Through encounters with DUTIES, a Nellore-based nonprofit group working on health awareness projects, Hijras in the digital story make claims for fair treatment by their customers and strengthen global advocacy for transgender rights.

Marty Otañez, Producer
Jordan Reck, Editor

Video features the health and ecological costs of uranium mining by Australian-based Paladin in Malawi, Africa. Created for class project, Culture and the Environment, Anthropology Department, University of Colorado, Denver, fall 2009.

Teri Hauser (TeriBH@comcast.net) producer

Marty Otañez (marty.otanez@ucdenver.edu) instructor

Men in Nursing, a medical anthropology video, features five male nurses in California and their experiences in a gendered healthcare workforce. Latino, Asian, and African American male nurses, nurse students, and directors of nursing programs discuss the adrenalin surge in emergency rooms and the gratification of keeping babies healthy in newborn intensive care units. Male nurses tell their stories of overcoming stereotypes and achieving success in a traditionally female dominated professional.

The video targets young adult males (ages 16-24) to encourage them to consider nursing as a viable career, and pressures medical anthropologists engaged in health policy to increase the number of male nurses. The film is a digital intervention to reduce nursing shortages in California and the U.S. generally. Marty Otañez and Bob Patterson, RN and administrative director of the California Institute for Nursing and Healthcare, co-produced Men in Nursing in 2009.

In summer 2001, the University of California Research Expeditions Program sponsored my research project called “Slave Traders of Lake Nyasa in Malawi.” The project involved 13 international fieldworkers focused on past and present forms of slavery in Malawi, specifically child labor and bonded labor in Malawi’s tobacco growing sector. Two teams of field assistants conducted ethnographic research on tobacco farms and villages nearby tobacco farms in Nhkotakota and Kasungu districts in Malawi during two week trips.

The Wall Street Journal mentioned the Malawi fieldwork project in a news story on international education projects in October 2001.

Short video (5 mins.) shows key project findings.

Click image to watch video

Watch the preview video on the Public Hearing on the impact of the Free Trade Area of the Americas on health (5:20 mins.).

Ellen Shaffer and Joe Brenner with the Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health (CPATH), and I created the preview video in January 2007. CPATH is a widely recognized leader and a reliable resource in the debates on global trade and health. CPATH has encouraged public health leaders to articulate their stake in protecting public accountability. Visit the CPATH website for more information, and to subscribe CPATH’s listserv on global trade and health policy issues.

The preview video is part of a video project on the Public Hearing on the impact of the Free Trade Area of the Americas on health. The Public Hearing occurred in Miami, Florida, in November 2003.

Judith Wilkenfeld, a global tobacco control advocate with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids in Washington, D.C., presented on global trade and the tobacco industry at the 2003 Public Hearing. Wilkenfeld’s presentation and the presentations of other public health advocates are available on the DVD of the Public Hearing. Contact CPATH at cpath@cpath.org to obtain a copy of the complete DVD.