IMPORTANT INFORMATION: This talk will be presented online using Zoom. Registration is required before 3:00 pm on Tuesday, 17 February 2026. Log in information for Zoom will be emailed to those who have registered with their registration confirmation. The session will be recorded and posted to WAPA's YouTube channel within a few days of the event.
Title: Two Examples of Public Health Intervention Research Shaped Directly by Anthropological Theory and Methods
Abstract: Dr. Edberg will be talking about two current public health research and intervention projects that explicitly draw on anthropological theory and methods. The first is a community-collaborative youth firearms violence prevention project conducted as a partnership between George Washington University and a community in DC's Ward 8. Formative qualitative research, and development of the intervention and evaluation tools were completed in Phase I of the project; implementation and collection of data is now ongoing. The intervention approach was influenced in part by cultural persona theory, a specific adaptation of cultural models theory. The second project is a collaboration with an urban Native American health/social services provider in Baltimore and Boston to conduct systematic qualitative-to-quantitative research with a goal of developing a scale that could be used to assess indigenous historical trauma and its effects on health disparities. This project also uses cultural models theory and cultural domain analysis in the qualitative component, and is currently ongoing as well.
Speakers: Mark Edberg
Mark Edberg, PhD, MA, is a Professor in the Prevention and Community Health Department in the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University, with secondary appointments in the Department of Anthropology and Elliott School of International Affairs. Dr. Edberg is a cultural anthropologist with 30 years’ experience in social and community research, interventions, evaluation, and strategic planning (domestic and global) focusing on health disparities and vulnerable populations. Currently, he is Principal Investigator (PI) on a community-based NIH-funded firearms violence prevention effort in Washington, DC, and also PI for a study addressing indigenous historical trauma and its role in health disparities among American Indian/Alaska Native populations, together with an urban Native American partner. He directs two Centers, the Avance Center for the Advancement of Immigrant/Refugee Health (previous funding from the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Prevention and Control), and the global-oriented Center for Social Well-Being and Development (CSWD), the latter with a record of projects for UNICEF in multiple countries. He has also directed or been co-investigator on projects for the Gates Foundation and multiple U.S. agencies, including NIH, CDC, SAMHSA, the U.S. Office of Minority Health, the Administration for Children, Youth and Families, and others. Dr. Edberg was co-chair of the 2014 National Minority Health Disparities Conference (NIMHD), a 2015 Salzburg Seminar Fellow (on Youth, Economics and Violence), winner of the 2013 national Praxis award for applied anthropology, a Fulbright Senior Specialist awardee, and he is a Fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA), Program Director for the 2021 SfAA annual meetings, and current president of the Washington Association of Professional Anthropologists (WAPA). He has authored/edited five books and numerous journal publications. He is also a songwriter and musician, with current band called the Black Shag Sherpas (www.blackshagsherpas.com).
.gif)