Resume

• 2008

  Ph.D.

  Medical Anthropology

  Cultural Anthropology

  University of Florida

• 2004

  MPH

  Epidemiology

• 1999

  English

  Spanish

  Tsimane'

  BA

  Anthropology

• Epidemiology

  Research

  Ethnography

  Stata

  Quantitative Research

  Literature Reviews

  Higher Education

  Website Administration

  Qualitative Research

  Tsimane'

  GIS

  Data Collection

  Anthropology

  Biocultural Anthropology

  Spanish

  Statistics

  Public Health

  Program Evaluation

  Chronic Stress

  Grant Writing

  The Tsimane’ Amazonian Panel Study (TAPS): Nine years (2002-2010) of annual data available to the public

  Ricardo Godoy

  Rebecca Zhang

  Vincent Vadez

  Susan Tanner

  Victoria Reyes-García

  William Leonard

  This brief communication contains a description of the 2002–2010 annual panel collected by the Tsimane’ Amazonian Panel Study team. The study took place among the Tsimane’

  a native Amazonian society of forager-horticulturalists. The team tracked a wide range of socio-economic and anthropometric variables from all residents (633 adults ≥16 years; 820 children) in 13 villages along the Maniqui River

  Department of Beni. The panel is ideally suited to examine how market exposure and modernization affect the well-being of a highly autarkic population and to examine human growth in a non-Western rural setting.

  The Tsimane’ Amazonian Panel Study (TAPS): Nine years (2002-2010) of annual data available to the public

  Connie Betterley

  M. Miaisha Mitchell

  P. Qasimah Boston

  Clarence C. Gravlee

  Neighborhood characteristics such as poverty and racial composition are associated with inequalities in access to food stores and in the risk of obesity

  but the pathways between food environments and health are not well understood. This article extends research on consumer food environments by examining the perspectives of food-store owners and managers. We conducted semistructured

  open-ended interviews with managers and owners of 20 food stores in low-income

  predominantly African American neighborhoods in Tallahassee

  Florida (USA). The interviews were designed to elicit store managers’ and owners’ views about healthy foods

  the local food environment

  and the challenges and opportunities they face in creating access to healthy foods. We elicited perceptions of what constitutes “healthy foods” using two free-list questions. The study was designed and implemented in accord with principles of community-based participatory research. Store owners’ and managers’ conceptions of “healthy foods” overlapped with public health messages

  but (a) agreement about which foods are healthy was not widespread and (b) some retailers perceived processed foods such as snack bars and sugar-sweetened juice drinks as healthy. In semistructured interviews

  store owners and managers linked the consumer food environment to factors across multiple levels of analysis

  including: business practices such as the priority of making sales and the delocalization of decision-making

  macroeconomic factors such as poverty and the cost of healthier foods

  individual and family-level factors related to parenting and time constraints

  and community-level factors such as crime and decline of social cohesion. Our results link food stores to multilevel

  ecological models of the food environment.

  Food store owners’ and managers’ perspectives on the food environment: an exploratory mixed-methods study

  Ricardo Godoy

  Eduardo Undurraga

  Josh McDermott

  Nature

  Music is present in every culture

  but the degree to which it is shaped by biology remains debated. One widely discussed phenomenon is that some combinations of notes are perceived by Westerners as pleasant

  or consonant

  whereas others are perceived as unpleasant

  or dissonant. The contrast between consonance and dissonance is central to Western music and its origins have fascinated scholars since the ancient Greeks. Aesthetic responses to consonance are commonly assumed by scientists to have biological roots

  and thus to be universally present in humans. Ethnomusicologists and composers

  in contrast

  have argued that consonance is a creation of Western musical culture. The issue has remained unresolved

  partly because little is known about the extent of cross-cultural variation in consonance preferences. Here we report experiments with the Tsimane’—a native Amazonian society with minimal exposure to Western culture—and comparison populations in Bolivia and the United States that varied in exposure to Western music. Participants rated the pleasantness of sounds. Despite exhibiting Western-like discrimination abilities and Western-like aesthetic responses to familiar sounds and acoustic roughness

  the Tsimane’ rated consonant and dissonant chords and vocal harmonies as equally pleasant. By contrast

  Bolivian city- and town-dwellers exhibited significant preferences for consonance

  albeit to a lesser degree than US residents. The results indicate that consonance preferences can be absent in cultures sufficiently isolated from Western music

  and are thus unlikely to reflect innate biases or exposure to harmonic natural sounds. The observed variation in preferences is presumably determined by exposure to musical harmony

  suggesting that culture has a dominant role in shaping aesthetic responses to music.

  Indifference to dissonance in native Amazonians reveals cultural variation in music perception

  TAPS Bolivia Study Team

  Julie Yiu

  Elena L. Grigorenko

  Jere R. Behrmn

  Eduardo A. Undurraga

  \nResearch in industrial nations suggests that formal math skills are associated with improvements in market and non-market outcomes. But do these associations also hold in a highly autarkic setting with a limited formal labor market? We examined this question using observational annual panel data (2008 and 2009) from 1121 adults in a native Amazonian society of forager-farmers in Bolivia (Tsimane’). Formal math skills were associated with an increase in wealth in durable market goods and in total wealth between data collection rounds

  and with improved indicators of own reported perceived stress and child health. These associations did not vary significantly by people's Spanish skills or proximity to town. We conclude that the positive association between math skills and market and non-market outcomes extends beyond industrial nations to even highly autarkic settings.

  Math skills and market and non-market outcomes: Evidence from an Amazonian society of forager-farmers

  J.M. Flood

  Ruiz

  J.D

  Tabshouri

  L.

  Wu

  N.

  Elms

  W.

  Nonoyama

  A.

  Westenhouse

  J. L.

  The purpose of this study was to evaluate the sensitivity and positive predictive value (PPV) of a registry data linkage procedure used in the California AIDS and Tuberculosis (TB) Registry Data Linkage Study to identify AIDS/TB comorbidity cases in California. The California AIDS registry data from 1981 to 2006 were linked to the California TB registry data from 1996 to 2006 using LinkPlus

  a probabilistic record linkage program developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

  and matched results were manually reviewed to determine true or false matches. We estimated the sensitivity of this procedure to range from 98.0 per cent (95% confidence interval

  CI: 97.3%

  98.7%) to 98.8 per cent (95% CI: 98.1%

  99.2%)

  and the PPV to be 100 per cent (95% CI: 96.8%

  100.0%). Our study demonstrated the feasibility of using this linkage procedure to match AIDS and TB registry data with a very high degree of accuracy.

  Matching AIDS and tuberculosis registry data to identify AIDS/tuberculosis comorbidity cases in California.

  Alan

  Baylor University

  University of Florida

  University of Florida

  California Department of Public Health

  University of Florida

  Assistant Professor

  Baylor University

  Epidemiologic Investigation Service Fellow (Cal-EIS)

  California Department of Public Health

  ABD Graduate Student and Co-PI

  NSF: Culture

  Change and Chronic Stress in Lowland Bolivia

  The research focuses on the relationship between stress and socio-cultural change. We are carrying out this research among a group of foraging-farmers

  the Tsimane' of lowland Bolivia

  who are at an early stage of exposure to markets and non-traditional cultures. We are trying to solve the puzzle of why Tsimane' have some of the lowest known rates of short-term stress biomarkers and related adverse health outcomes despite two decades of increasing market exposure

  which is usually associated with increased stress and worsening health.

  University of Florida