| CuSAG's programs constitute the foundations of its research, training, and technical assistance programs. |
| Programs |
The Cultural Ecology of Health and Change (the CEHC) The past and ongoing work of CuSAG is informed by the CuSAG Director, Professor Tony Whitehead’s “Cultural Ecology of Health and Change" (the CEHC), which is made up of four systems developed to bring scientific standardization and rigor to CuSAG’s approach to ethnographic and community health research, and in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of projects in which CuSAG becomes involved. The four systems of the CEHC are:
See the CEHC page for more details.
Consortium in Applied Ethnography and Community Health Sciences (The CAECHS) (in development) The Consortium in Applied Ethnography and Community Health Sciences, hereafter referred to as the CAECHS (pronounced “Cash”), or the Consortium is a CuSAG program in development. Its purpose is to bring together faculty members, researchers, practitioners, policy makers, community leaders, and activists to cover a broad spectrum of ethnographic research methods and planned change perspectives to the fields of community health and organizational effectiveness. The Consortium is first being developed through cross organizational Associates of CuSAG, who will then explore whether their organizations or representatives from those organizations would like to be included in the consortium structure. The Consortium will be further organized with teams based on the four systems included in the CEHC (community, organizational, and cultural assessment research, project planning, project implementation, and project evaluation). However, Consortium members may not feel compelled to use the exact methodologies of the CEHC, and may use whatever methodologies are most preferabable to them. As the consortium grows, new members may be added depending on the kind of work in which they are involved, and where they are located in various parts of the US or the world. A primary goal of the Consortium is to develop common approaches to research, training, and technical assistance in ethnography and community health planning, implementation, and evaluation. The Cross National Collaborative on Youth Health and Gender Issues (in development) The Cross National Collaborative in Youth Health and Gender Issues (hereafter referred to as the Collaborative, or the CNCYH, pronounced “Cinch”) is a program in development. The long term goal of the CNCYH is to establish an applied research, training and technical assistance Collaborative between interested academic institutions and stakeholder organizations in the Baltimore-Washington Area and academic institutions and stakeholder organizations in Jamaica, and eventually the broader Caribbean. The CuSAG Director, Dr. Whitehead made considerable progress towards the development of the Collaborative through meetings with representatives from the University of West Indies, and from governmental and non-governmental organizations during his summer 2007 visit to Jamaica during the summer of 2007. The initial name for the Collaborative was the US-Caribbean Collaborative, but CuSAG decided to leave it open because of the expectations that the Collaborative may grow to include other cultural areas of the world. The immediate purpose of the Collaborative is the advancement of knowledge and methodologies for effectively addressing similar sets of health problems and risks for youth residing in both the US Baltimore-Washington and the Jamaica-Caribbean cultural areas through the exchange of existing knowledge, best practices, skills and resources. The development of the Collaborative is being pursued with the following objectives:
The Baltimore-Washington Urban Corridor (the BWUC) (in development) Over the past 17 years, CuSAG has worked in communities and neighborhoods in Baltimore, Washington DC, and Prince Georges County. As part of the proposed CAECHS, CuSAG plans to bring together colleagues who have worked in other communities within the Baltimore-Washington Urban Corridor (the BWUC), consisting of communities and neighborhoods stretching from Baltimore City and its suburban communities, through communities surrounding Interstate 95, down into and the greater Washington, DC metropolitan area, including nearby communities in Northern Virginia. The CAECHS will bring on board other researchers, practitioners, policy makers, community leaders, and activists who are working in communities throughout the BWUC for the purpose of sharing and pursuing resources to facilitate a multi-disciplinary and multi-method response to issues affecting this area. The “Capital Black Belt” (in development) The Capital Black Belt (CBB) is a smaller section of the BWUC, consisting of communities in and around Washington, DC, in which more than 90% of the population is black. It includes neighborhoods in the eastern Wards of Washington DC, and small adjacent communities of Prince George County, Maryland such as Capitol Heights, Cheverly, Fairmont Heights, Glenarden, Kentland, Largo and Seat Pleasant. These communities have also been designated as part of the CBB to bring a regional focus to communities facing similar health and social issues. The commonality of these problems across these communities is often overlooked in the planning of social and health programs and policies because of their municipal and political boundaries. US-India Cross National Cultural Ecology of Health and Change Collaborative (in development) Plans for this initiative emerged from contact by Professor Sachindra Narayan, Professor of Anthropology at A.N.Sihna Institute of Social Studies (ANSISS) of Bihar India requesting the development of an Institute-to-Institute research, training, and technical assistance collaborative utilizing the methods of the Ethnographically Informed Community and Cultural Research Systems (the EICCARS). This initiative will begin with EICCARS research activities, and will eventually be extended to include programs of the other CEHC systems, of designing, implementing and evaluating new projects that have been informed by the EICCARS data. While this project is being initiated by CuSAG, it will include various members of the CAECHS, as soon as that Consortium is established. CAECHS Ethnographic Field Sites and Databases (in development) CuSAG has begun the development of ongoing research, technical assistance and training field sites in the communities in which CuSAG has been involved in the Capital Black Belt. This process has developed over the past decade through the work of students enrolled each spring in Dr. Whitehead’s Urban Ethnography class, which has a field ethnography company. Dr. Whitehead found that the data collected by students in his urban ethnography class, especially assessment and evaluation data, could be added to ongoing data bases that will then be made available to organizations for securing funding and carrying out their own future projects. Along with the development of the CAECHS, CuSAG plans to formally establish communities of the broader Baltimore Washington Urban Corridor as ongoing CAEHCS field sites, based on the various communities in which CAEHCS members are carrying out research or other professional work. As demonstrated through his urban ethnography class, ongoing field sites provide students with experiential training opportunities in real communities. The field sites will also facilitate the technical assistance component of the CAECHS, as students will be involved in assisting community based organizations (CBOs) with the community and cultural assessment research, and in planning, implementation, and evaluation of their (the CBOs) projects. Communities will also receive technical assistance from the researchers and other professionals who are carrying out work there, or through their supervision of their students working in these communities. This field site model will also be established in Jamaica, and perhaps other parts of the Caribbean, as the CNYCH is established. Similar field sites will be developed in India as that collaborative also develops. Laboratory for CuSAG Materials Development, and Data Management, Analysis, Presentation, and Publication (in development) CuSAG has collected considerable data from its projects carried out in the communities in the various BWUC communities in which its members has worked. CuSAG is searching for funding to establish a laboratory for the development of various materials for facilitating the work of its various programs and projects, and as a resource to facilitate the management, analysis, presentation, and publication of data generated by CuSAG, the CAECHS, and the CNCYH. One of the first tasks for this Materials and Data Lab will be to secure the computer hardware and software to carry out the work of the lab, and to offer CuSAG training and technical assistance materials on line. This program is being developed to further pursue the analysis of cultural systems that is implied in the name and original purpose of CuSAG: cultural analysis. This program will simply focus on the African American cultural Diaspora, building on the ongoing work in the Capital Black Belt, Jamaica, and other parts of the Caribbean. Its focus is not simply applied, as is the work done by CAEHCS, but is being designed to encourage pure and more humanistic research and training with regards to the Diaspora. CuSAG Bimonthly Seminars, Periodic Conferences, and Online Working Papers CuSAG will disseminate its research findings in peer reviewed and non-peer review print and online publications, online at the CuSAG websites, at professional conferences, and at its own periodic conferences and bi-monthly seminars. See the Publications page for details. |
CuSAG The Cultural Systems Analysis Group |