Abstract
Medical anthropologists have long been involved in health-program evaluation and have studied factors related to program acceptance in target communities. However, assessing the reasons for the success or failure of a program should not be an end in itself, but should be a process that generates guidelines for the development of similar programs elsewhere and more general suggestions about the appropriate roles that applied anthropologists can fulfill. This paper briefly summarizes the research of an anthropological team who investigated the apparent failure of a respite home facility for retarded children in a suburban neighborhood to generate requisite community support. The team was able to develop a series of recommendations in aid of a plan to establish such centers elsewhere in the county, and in the state of Florida as a whole. However, the paper is more broadly concerned with applied anthropological attempts to define the nature of target or client communities and at delineating the appropriate anthropological perspective on health care delivery transactions. New roles for the anthropologist as evaluator will be considered.
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The research was undertaken in conjunction with the Hillsborough Association for Retarded Citizens, Inc. Inez Brady, Donald Houston, David Kahn and Harry Rosenthal, the student members of the team, collected the data that resulted in the program evaluation herein described. This paper is an expanded version, utilizing case material, of some theoretical comments embodied in a paper originally read at the annual meeting of the Southern Anthropological Society, Atlanta, Georgia, April 1, 1976.
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Angrosino, M.V. Applied anthropology and the concept of the underdog: Implications for community mental health planning and evaluation. Community Ment Health J 14, 291–299 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00778604
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00778604