Anthropology
Open Access

Keith V. Bletzer

Biography

Formally trained in medical-cultural-social anthropology and public health, Keith Bletzer has focused on prevention work and research that blends community training-teaching and social justice. Bridging academia and non-academia, his current work considers the impact of adversity on low-income populations, especially for people immigrating to the United States. Interest in adversity began with earlier work on youth services utilization as one response to poverty (Latino families in the Northeast), matured through medical anthropology fieldwork on life-threatening afflictions (health seeking and folk illness in lower Central America), and extended into new populations with work on HIV/AIDS (farm workers in the Midwest; migrants in the Southeast; Native Americans in Southwest), drug/alcohol use (migrants in the Southeast) and sexual violence (sex workers in the Southeast; women in the Southwest). He has worked with team projects of varied methodologies and performed single-investigator endeavors; publication increasingly has included articles that bring anthropology to a non-specialist audience.

Research Interest

Research on AIDS & Anthropology