Kate McGurn Centellas received her Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Chicago in 2008. She is a Croft Institute for International Studies associate professor of anthropology and Latin American studies and associate chair in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Mississippi. Her work focuses on state-level science, technology, and medical projects, primarily in Bolivia, where she has conducted fieldwork since the early 2000s. She argues that the implementation of scientific research and medical innovation in places like La Paz, Bolivia, is epistemiologically relevant – it is often sites outside of the centers of scientific research where innovation emerges.
Centellas’s current research examines the development and launch of a Bolivian-Chinese satellite and the implementation of an ambitious telehealth project using satellite bandwidth. The goal of this project is to provide telehealth coverage in every municipality, a challenging social and technical problem considering the tremendous geographic and cultural diversity of Bolivia. She collaborates closely with Bolivian institutions, community members, and stakeholders. Centellas additionally works with the School of Population Health at the University of Mississippi Medical Center to strengthen partnerships between Bolivia and Mississippi so practitioners, community members, and scholars can learn from the experiences of telemedicine in each location.
Centellas also co-directs a social science methods field school in La Paz, Bolivia, in the summers. She closely involves students in hands-on research design and implementation via the field school and emphasizes the importance of community partnerships and collaboration via experiential international learning.
Meagen Rosenthal, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of pharmacy administration in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Mississippi. Rosenthal’s research focuses on developing systems to integrate health research evidence into practice (either in clinical settings or the daily lives of people) faster and more effectively. She approaches this broad topic area through two specific areas. The first specific area involves partnering with people who have chronic conditions such as diabetes and obesity to understand their specific needs and help to generate research questions that are meaningful to them. The goal of this approach is that by generating knowledge from research questions that are important to people living with these conditions, these people will be more likely to adopt and integrate that knowledge into their daily lives. The second specific area involves working with community pharmacists to transform their practices to provide patients, especially those in rural communities where resources are limited, with much-needed services focused on chronic disease management. Community pharmacists are integral health care team members who are more accessible to patients than most other health care providers; however, they remain an underutilized resource.