Health Models: Part of a Model World?

• In Event: Modeling Health Futures: Practices of Assuming, Anticipating, and Forecasting - I

Abstract

Mathematical models in health are increasingly central to tracking and projecting disease, allocating public health funding, and shaping thinking about health and illness. In this paper we use two seemingly disparate examples, an epidemiological mathematical model of the spread of Ebola, and a “model village” in Ethiopia that has been hailed as a model for gender equality, health and sustainable development, to challenge the assumption that mathematical models in health are solely defined and driven by statistical data. Drawing on interviews with epidemiologists and ethnographic fieldwork we unpack these examples and trace social and conceptual processes of model making. We argue that the proliferation of numbers, matrix and statistics within the fields of health and medicine, serve to “black box” processes of model making that are shared by other forms of models used as tools for social engineering. Models, in various forms, serve as tools to interpret, predict, and change the social world; in this way, they are part of what Adams et al. (2009) have termed “regimes of anticipation.” We bring these ideas together with Morgan’s (2010) work on models in economics, Geertz’ distinction between “models of” and “models for,” and Behrend, Jung and Rottenburg’s (2014) concept of models as “tokens” that enable rationalities to travel. Connections between our two examples suggest that the proliferation of models and modeling practices within the field of health can be fruitfully situated within, and analyzed in light of, a broader paradigm of models.

Authors

• Rebecca R Henderson, University of Florida

• Marit Ostebo, University of Florida