Understanding Health and Well-Being in Africa and its Diasporas
African Heritage Studies Association
39th Annual International Conference
University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida
October 19-21, 2006

“IT IS ABOUT DEFINING THE WELL-BEING OF A PEOPLE”

The African Heritage Studies Association invites your participation in its 39th annual conference to be held at the University of South Florida, Tampa, October 19-21. 

The theme of this year’s conference is “Understanding Health and Well-Being in Africa and its Diasporas.”  As the social ills associated with modernity penetrate our lives, the phenomenon of health security/insecurity has emerged as a global issue that disproportionately afflicts the people of Africa and its diasporas.  Today, the problem of health disparity is attracting heightened scientific attention, and there is no shortage of research on acute and chronic health problems.  This heightened attention is more often than not set within a biomedical frame of what constitutes health and well-being, but at the same time, there is growing awareness that illness is not simply a biomedical phenomenon. 

The crisis of HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases, hypertension, diabetes, respiratory ailments, etc. are well known.  But less on the forefront of our consciousness as aspects of health security/insecurity are the intractable economic, political, environmental, racial, ethnic, social, military, and other historically created social ills and vulnerabilities.  Illness is a function of the social, cultural and environmental worlds we create by our collective histories.  According to this view, physical and mental illness are, in general, symptoms of complex, long-term adverse social policies and cultural directions.  This view invites radical questions as to the adequacy of definitions, investigative strategies, explanations, diagnoses, and solutions based on a system of knowledge and philosophies anchored in epistemic power relations forged over centuries. 

The conference encourages bold questions about health security/insecurity and its inseparable link to the political economy of Africa and its diasporas.  Conference participants are encouraged to view health security/insecurity in the broadest terms, allowing for rethinking of the basic concepts by which we understand the well-being of a people.  This is an interdisciplinary conference, and participation is invited from academics as well as other professionals, from faculty and from graduate students.  Presenters may address any of the following or related topics as panels, individual papers, round tables, or poster presentations.  Possible topics include but are not limited to: 

• Health security as a cultural and historical condition
• Health disparities: race, color, class, culture, gender, age and health
• Knowledge, power, and conceptions of health
• Indigenous knowledge and conceptions of health and well-being
• Economic security and health
• Globalization, migration, and health
• Social organization:  family, sexuality, youth and health  
• Mental health and its varied conceptions
• Health, legal and political rights, and self-determination
• Human rights, human security, and health
• Healing:  art, science, spirit
• Natural and un-natural disasters and health
• Culture, environment, and sustainable health