Graduate student Meredith Jackson, supervised by Dr. Kathryn S. Oths, will use an anthropological methodology called cultural domain analysis to determine if a shared cultural model(s) of a culturally-defined "good" pregnancy exists in Jalisco, Mexico. If a cultural model is identified, cultural consonance analysis will then be used to determine statistically if a woman's ability to approximate the shared model is associated with maternal psychosocial and physiological health, and subsequently, better pregnancy outcomes.
The state of Jalisco has a pluralistic reproductive health care system, including midwives and medical doctors, and widely varying municipality-types with differential access to biomedical health care and the global community. Jaliscienses maintain a strong identity with regional traditions, such as food, music, and traditional healers, as well as strong ties to the economy of El Norte (the U.S.). Thus, Jalisco provides an ideal setting for a study of intracultural variation in the context of culture change. The research will be conducted in the Metropolitan Zone of Guadalajara; Ciudad Guzman, a medium-sized transitional city; and, three small rural communities, Pihuamo, Zapotiltic, and Zapotitlan de Vadillo.
Cultural consonance will be correlated with pregnancy-related psychosocial measures of stress such as pregnancy-related anxiety and perceived stress, and Epstein-Barr virus antibody levels; and pregnancy and birth outcomes. She also will control for the effects of socio-economic status, locality, household characterisitcs, the number of previous children, age, and education. This research will contribute to the education of a social scientist and to better understanding the connection between culture and health.
