陽明交通大學公衛所 Faculty Seminar

時間：114年5月12日(一) 12:10PM – 13:10PM

地點：醫學二館415教室 (Rm415, Medical Building II)

講者： 范心蕾副教授 Dr. Elsa Fan

(Chair, Department of Global Languages, Cultures and Societies and Associate Professor of Anthropology, Webster University.

The Fulbright Program)

講題：How Things Travel: The Standardization of People and Places

Abstract

In the mid- to late-2000s, sexual activity became the primary route of HIV transmission in China. This shift highlighted the rising rates of HIV in men who have sex with men (MSM) and the speed at which HIV was transmitted. In response, the public health community, with the support of global health donors, made a concerted push to expand HIV testing in this population. At the same time, HIV testing became linked to performance-based incentives as part of an effort to improve “value for money” and ensure accountability for health spending.

The performance-based financing model has long been championed by donors in the global north, and its export into China promised to both reduce HIV transmission and institutionalize more robust metrics for distributing health resources. In this presentation, I explore the impacts of these global health interventions and models and the assumptions that undergird their circulation. I ask: How do things like HIV testing and performance incentives travel across social and cultural contexts, and what do they do as they circulate?

I argue that when such interventions are implemented without attention to social and political contexts, they risk standardizing people and places in ways that obscure critical complexities shaping public health outcomes. Instead, we must consider the histories and contexts in which HIV and other global public health challenges unfold, as well as the meanings people assign to them.