Bronx Research
name: label: Collection Correspondent
content: Conklin, Harold C., 1926-2016
label: Collection Correspondent
content: Greenberg, Joseph H. (Joseph Harold), 1915-2001
label: Collection Creator
content: Harwood, Alan
setName: label: See more items in
content: Alan Harwood Papers
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1957-1986
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: National Anthropological Archives
identifier: label: Identifier
content: NAA.2006-25, Series 2
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
arrangement: label: Arrangement
content: Folders in this series are organized by topic.

SUBSERIES: BUSINESS FILES

SUBSERIES: METHODOLOGY

SUBSERIES: RESEARCH FILES

SUBSERIES: DATA SLIPS (RESTRICTED UNTIL 2056)
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: Ethnographic Study of New York City Health Areas 24 and 26 --This applied project was carried out in cooperation with a comprehensive primary-care health center [Martin Luther King, Jr. Health Center, originally called the Montefiore Neighborhood Medical Care Demonstration] located in the South Bronx, and the data therefore focus particularly on health, illness, and medical beliefs and practices.  Funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), the health center was mandated to raise health levels of residents of the two Health Areas.  I began the research in August 1967 as a regular  
employee of the Research Department of the health center and then received a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.  As Principal Investigator of that grant, I hired and trained a research team of local residents and expanded the study to 11 randomly selected multi-unit buildings in the area.  Researchers visited households in these buildings over the course of approximately a year, gathering data through participant observation, formal interviewing, and process recording. (For more on the setting and methodology of this study, see Harwood 1977: 6-33.)  This Carnegie-funded part of the research ran from 1968 to 1970.  

Data from this study are in three different forms:  
(1) Process and participant observation data gathered from households during the course of the study were recorded on 3" x 5" multi-copy slips, which are filed chronologically, by household, and by topic;
(2) Data from formal interviews or from specific data-gathering projects (e.g., contents of medicine cabinets, dietary practices, immunization status of children, medical records from the health center of participants in the study) were recorded on specific questionnaire sheets or in spiral notebooks;  
(3) Information from the first two sources was transferred by researchers onto data analysis sheets for quantitative treatment.   

In addition to these data, this set of materials contains research reports, correspondence, and business files from the project.  It also includes questionnaires, code sheets, punch cards, and printouts from a census of the two Health Areas, which was carried out before I joined the Research Department of the center.  

Besides providing basic data on health status and healthcare practices, additional information in the archive about housing, schooling, shopping, and working provides a vivid portrait of people living in a low-income area of New York City during the late-1960's period of the "Great Society." The archive also invites methodological inquiry by including information suitable for comparing observational data with data from medical records and census interviews on the same families. - Alan Harwood 

Correspondence, memos, research proposals, and personnel files for the study can be found in Subseries: Business Files.  The subseries also contains materials relating to other research and activities of the health center.  These include health center reports; materials relating to an Albert Einstein College of Medicine community medicine course, which Harwood helped prepare and teach; and testimony by Harwood and other representatives of the health center to the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs on the housing condition of the South Bronx.  

Process and participant observation data collected by Harwood and his research team are located under Subseries: Data Slips.  Because the data slips contain identifying information of households in the study, the entire subseries is restricted.  Other data and the analyses of data (some of which are restricted) are located in Subseries: Research Files along with papers and reports by Harwood, reports by colleagues, census data, and reference materials.  Among the papers by Harwood are drafts of his article "The Hot-Cold Theory of Disease: Implications for Treatment of Puerto Rican Patients" and his paper that he presented at the 1970 American Anthropological Association meeting, "Participant Observation and Census Data in Urban Research."  

One of the healthcare practices Harwood looked at in the study was spiritism among the Puerto Rican community.  Although his book Rx:  Spiritist as Needed:  A Study of a Puerto Rican Community Mental Health Resource is not in the collection, Subseries: Research Files does contain a draft of his paper "Puerto Rican Spirtism as a Community Mental Health Resource" along with his field notes and writings by others on the subject.  

It should be noted that during the study, the health center changed its name from the Neighborhood Medical Care Demonstration (NMCD) to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Health Center.