The Social Life of Health Data

Alena Thiel is an anthropologist whose work covers public sector digitalization, statistical production and the development of health information systems in Ghana. She leads the project “How Democracies Know: Identification Technologies and Quantitative Analyses of Development in Ghana” and is affiliated Senior Researcher in the project “African Technoscapes”. Samuel Ntewusu has worked with the University of Ghana, Accra as a Research Assistant and later as a faculty member teaching African History from earliest times to the present. He has recently been appointed as the Director of the Institute of African Studies. 

Chapter 1 Developing an interdisciplinary reading of Ghanaian health data histories: An introduction.- Chapter 2 Narratives on health policies in northern Ghana: A note on British colonial policy and local knowledge systems, 1902-1945.- Chapter 3 “Campaign”: A history of the Medial Field Unit in Ghana.- Chapter 4 Mental health in Ghana: Standardisation, advocacy and changing perceptions of care and disease.- Chapter 5 Traditional medicine in Ghana: Statistical production and professionalisation of practitioners, practice, and products.- Chapter 6 Hepatitis B virus infection and the Ghanaian healthcare worker: Risk, standardisation, and disease Prevention.- Chapter 7 Health-in-all, data harmonisation, and cross-sectoral collaboration in Ghana’s health sector.- Chapter 8 Conclusion: health data’s social life.