Collaborative Research: Behavioral Science and the Making of the Right-Reasoning Public Health Citizenry

Project: Research project

Project Details

Description

This collaborative research investigates the production of a normative image of right-reasoning public health citizenry that is articulated within behavioral science and enacted throughout U.S. public health agencies. We ask how predictive and explanatory models for public health behavior have also constituted normative models for moral reasoning and public health citizenship. Behavioral science's pivotal role in shaping public health and policy responses to global health issues, including the Covid-19 pandemic, remains understudied.

Drawing on our expertise as science and technology studies (STS) researchers at the Mccourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University and the School of Public and Population Health at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), we will collaboratively investigate the nexus between historical precedents and contemporary practices of behavioral science in public health. We will employ methods from science and technology studies, including archival research and document analysis, to develop a comparative analysis of two principal behavioral models: (1) the Behavioral and Social Drivers of Vaccination Model, and (2) the Health Belief Model. By analyzing how behavioral science has become ingrained in public health institutions, we aim to create opportunities for reflective analysis and possible transformation of these crucial institutions by STS scholars, health policymakers, and behavioral scientists.

The Covid-19 pandemic triggered a crisis in public health authority and legitimacy. At this critical juncture for both public policy and public health, we will investigate the models of moral reasoning and public health citizenship embedded in U.S. public health agencies. Our research questions are: 1) How are the normative images of the right-reasoning public health citizenry produced through public health behavioral science? 2) How, and to what extent, have these normative images acquired dominance and authority in the governance of health? 3) How have these normative images been maintained in the face of resistance to expert claims and expert authority?

StatusActive
Effective start/end date4/1/243/31/26

Funding

  • National Science Foundation ( Award #2341513): $108,078.00

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