Vital Perspectives on Healthcare and Science: Thurka Sangaramoorthy

Description

Thurka Sangaramoorthy, author of Landscapes of Care: Immigration and Health in Rural America, will be in conversation with Jeremy Greene, Johns Hopkins professor of the history of medicine, as the first Vital Perspectives on Healthcare and Science session of 2024-25.

The Vital Perspectives on Healthcare and Science series engages with some of the most pressing public health issues of our time, in a regular public forum catalyzed by a book. It is hosted by the Program in Medicine, Science, and the Humanities.

Landscapes of Care is an insightful work on rural health in the U.S. and examines the ways immigrants, mainly from Latin America and the Caribbean, navigate the American health-care system. Since 1990, immigration to the U.S. has risen sharply, and rural areas have seen the highest increases. Thurka Sangaramoorthy reveals that that the corporatization of health-care delivery and immigration policies are deeply connected in rural America. Drawing from fieldwork that centers on Maryland's sparsely populated Eastern Shore, Sangaramoorthy shows how long-standing issues of precarity among rural health systems along with the exclusionary logics of immigration have mutually fashioned a "landscape of care" in which shared conditions of physical suffering and emotional anxiety among immigrants and rural residents generate powerful forms of regional vitality and social inclusion. Sangaramoorthy connects the Eastern Shore and its immigrant populations to many other places around the world that are struggling with the challenges of global migration, rural precarity, and health governance. Her extensive ethnographic and policy research shows the personal stories behind health inequity data and helps to give readers a human entry point into the enormous challenges of immigration and rural health.