This past November, Anuoluwapo Ajibade, PhD student in medical anthropology at Case Western Reserve University, received the 2025 Anthropological Responses to Health Emergencies (ARHE) Policy Brief Student Award from the Society for Medical Anthropology for a recent “Community Engagement for Public Health in Cleveland, OH, US: Evidence Briefing” report. This award highlights anthropological research focused on public health community engagement for pandemic preparedness and lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.
In addition to Ajibade, contributing co-authors of the report included Janet McGrath, professor and chair of CWRU’s Department of Anthropology, and Megan Schmidt-Sane, medical anthropologist at the Institute of Development Studies.
Results of the study included a set of recommendations for communities in Cleveland and beyond to:
- Plan for better responses to health emergencies; and
- Use community engagement and pandemic preparedness to more broadly improve health equity.
