Diversity as valued and troubled: social identities and demographic categories in understandings of rapid urban growth in Vanuatu

Adoption, Fostering, and Parental Absence in Vanuatu

Alloparenting, wherein people provide care to children who are not their biological offspring, is a key aspect of human child-rearing. In the Pacific, many children are adopted or fostered by custodial alloparents even when both biological parents are still alive. From a behavioral ecology perspective, such behaviors are puzzling: why parent someone else's child at your expense? Furthermore, little is known about how these arrangements are made in Pacific Islander societies today, who provides care, and what kinds of outcomes fostered children experience. A better understanding of these proximate factors may help reveal the ultimate drivers behind custodial alloparenting. Here, we report findings from a survey carried out with the caregivers of 282 children in rural areas of Vanuatu, an island nation in Melanesia. Most fostered and adopted children lived with relatives such as aunts, uncles, and grandparents (87.5%) rather than unrelated caregivers, with a strong preference for maternal kin. The most common reasons for these arrangements were that the parents had separated (16.7%), were engaging in labor migration (27.1%), or a combination of both (27.1%). Results for investment in children's education and their educational outcomes were mixed, although children removed from crisis situations did more poorly than children removed for aspirational reasons. Our findings suggest that custodial alloparenting helps families adapt to socioeconomic transitions and changing marriage practices. Outcomes may depend on a range of factors, such as the reason children were transferred out of the natal home to begin with.

Using multiple correspondence analysis to identify behaviour patterns associated with overweight and obesity in Vanuatu adults

Objective

The present study evaluates the use of multiple correspondence analysis (MCA), a type of exploratory factor analysis designed to reduce the dimensionality of large categorical data sets, in identifying behaviours associated with measures of overweight/obesity in Vanuatu, a rapidly modernizing Pacific Island country.

Design

Starting with seventy-three true/false questions regarding a variety of behaviours, MCA identified twelve most significantly associated with modernization status and transformed the aggregate binary responses of participants to these twelve questions into a linear scale. Using this scale, individuals were separated into three modernization groups (tertiles) among which measures of body fat were compared and OR for overweight/obesity were computed.

Setting

Vanuatu.

Participants

Ni-Vanuatu adults (n 810) aged 20–85 years.

Results

Among individuals in the tertile characterized by positive responses to most of or all the twelve modernization questions, weight and measures of body fat and the likelihood that measures of body fat were above the US 75th percentile were significantly greater compared with individuals in the tertiles characterized by mostly or partly negative responses.

Conclusions

The study indicates that MCA can be used to identify individuals or groups at risk for overweight/obesity, based on answers to simply-put questions. MCA therefore may be useful in areas where obtaining detailed information about modernization status is constrained by time, money or manpower.

Hygiene and Health: Who Do Mothers in Vanuatu Communicate with about Health?

Health information-seeking behaviour of mothers with children five years of age and younger in Vanuatu was examined using the structural properties of social networks. Data were collected from a rural village from two islands and an urban settlement in the capital, Port Vila, by face-to-face interviews using a structured questionnaire. Sociometric data on the structure of the network, the characteristics of key informants, and associations with outside sources of health information were analysed as interpersonal predictors of health promotion and behavior change. Rural mothers preferred the health advice of biomedical practitioners for diarrheal disease over traditional custom practitioners. Interpersonal connections were restricted in the urban mother network indicating that mothers were merely acquaintances or do not seek health advice from each other. Our findings suggest that biomedical practitioners are the best option for diffusing health and hygiene information for rural and urban mothers. Traditional healers and paraprofessionals could be strategically used to complete the missing links in network connectedness to optimally spread new information. The novel use of cross-sectional social network data can create a baseline evaluation to purposefully frame a health intervention. Our study provided a unique explanation of how network analysis offers insight into how key players can be identified and the circumstances in which they are likely to be able to influence hygiene practices of their peers.

Alternative medicine use at Vila Central Hospital: a survey of ‘custom medicine’ use in patients and staff a decade later

A structured questionnaire was administered to 50 medical patients, 50 surgical patients and 50 staff members at Vila Central Hospital, Vanuatu. A similar study was conducted 10 years earlier. In the intervening decade, Vanuatu has seen unprecedented population growth, increasing expatriate numbers, and the introduction of mobile phone and Internet networks. Given these social transformations, this study aimed to identify changes in custom medicine use over this period. Fifty-nine percent of interviewees had used custom medicine at least once, compared to 86% reported in the 2003 study. Thirty-two percent had used custom medicine in the last 12 months, a significant decline from 60% in the previous study. Collectively, rates of custom medicine use have declined but especially in the physical therapies such as bone setting. We believe this declining custom medicine use reflects an overall weakening traditional culture within Vanuatu and believe that within a generation, custom medicine knowledge will likely be lost.