The primary aim of this capstone is to investigate how varying cultural and social forces differentially affect infant mortality rates across rural Missouri. Broader anthropological and epidemiological phenomena are applied in order to conceptualize conditions that shape health and, in turn, health outcomes. This capstone challenges the perspective that health outcomes are a result of purely biological processes. In accordance, via methodology of both Critical Medical Anthropology and Social Epidemiology, I analyze infant mortality as a biological expression of cultural and social processes. Two fundamental research strategies are employed to contextualize infant mortality within rural Missouri: 1) quantitative multi-level analysis and 2) qualitative case study analysis. Utilizing data from WONDER, ACS, NCHS, and copious case studies, infant mortality rates across rural Missouri are considered in relation to determinants at the individual, population, and structural level. Results from both quantitative and qualitative analysis indicate an inverse relationship between accessibility of resources (material and nonmaterial) and infant mortality rates in rural Missouri. Social inequality unequally allocates access to resources that largely determine health advantage or disadvantage; infant mortality, or the lack thereof, is no exception. By understanding the risk-dimensions of health behaviors, cultural norms, and social institutions in rural Missouri, proper preventative and harm reduction practices can be implemented in order to eradicate infant mortality.

Anna Maxwell would like to thank their faculty sponsors Lauren Arnold and Katherine MacKinnon for their support with this project.