Center for Public Health (Department of Social and Preventive Medicine)
Position: Associate Professor
T +43 1 40160 34607
ruth.kutalek@meduniwien.ac.at
Keywords
Anthropology, Medical
Research group(s)
Research interests
Anthropological perspectives on infectious diseases and in disaster response, Covid-19, Ebola Virus Disease, Lassa fever: occupational situation of health care workers; psycho-social situation of Ebola survivors; health seeking behavior in times of crisis.
Access to health care for vulnerable populations (specifically migrants, refugees, certain ethnic groups)
Health care workers on the move from resource-poor settings (“brain drain”)
Diversity studies: Development of curricula in resource poor settings; transcultural competence in the medical curriculum
Ethnopharmacology: geophagy (consumption of clay) and its implications for public health research in Africa and Asia
Techniques, methods & infrastructure
Qualitative study designs (semi-structured and in-depth interviews; participatory research), Media Analysis, Applied Social Science Methods; Analysis with the software atlas.ti, using different theoretical frameworks, such as feminist and socio-political approaches
Grants
- Risk factors and work situation of health workers in the COVID-19 epidemic (2020)
Source of Funding: WWTF (Vienna Science and Technology Fund), COVID-19 Rapid Response Call
Principal Investigator - A Global Social Science Network for Infectious Threats and Antimicrobial Resistance – SoNAR-Global (2018)
Source of Funding: EU, Horizon 2020
Principal Investigator
Selected publications
- 2019 Jeleff M, Lehner L, Giles-Vernick T, Dückers M, Napier D, Jirovsky E, Kutalek R. Vulnerability assessment tools for infectious threats and antimicrobial resistance: a scoping review protocol. BMJ Open 2019;9:e031944. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2019-031944
- 2019 Giles-Vernick T, Kutalek R, Napier D, Kaawa-Mafigiri D et al. A new social sciences network for infectious threats. Lancet Infectious Diseases 19; 461-463. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(19)30159-8
- 2018 Kutalek R; Jirovsky E, Grabovac I: From macro- to micro-factors in health: Social science approaches in research on sexually transmitted infections. PLoS Medicine 15(1): e1002490. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1002490
- 2017 Mayrhuber S; Niederkrotenthaler T, Kutalek R: We are Survivors and not a Virus: Content Analysis of Media Reporting on Ebola Survivors in Liberia. PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases 11(8): e0005845. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0005845
- 2015 Kutalek R; Wang S; Falla M; Wesseh S; Gilbert J: Ebola interventions: Listen to communities. Lancet Global Health 22. Jan, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(15)70010-0