Myths on bodies and health of the Roma discussed at the Slovak Academy of Sciences

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Each year, the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAS) organizes a national ‘Week of Science and Technology’ – an event devoted to popularization of domestic scientific research. As part of this years’ edition of the event, the SAS Institute of Ethnology invited two P J Safarik university scholars, prof. Andrea Madarasova Geckova (our present co/editor in chief) and Andrej Belak, MSc.,   to discuss the most persistent ‘Myths on bodies and health of the Roma’ in Slovakia and beyond. During their one hour long entry, the presenters first reviewed the state-of-the-art evidence-based arguments against views such as that all risky behaviours are more common among the segregated Roma, that such bahaviours or specific genes might explain substantial part of the health-status gap between Roma and general populations, as well as that all participation in the maintenance of health-exposures on the part of the segregated Roma themselves could be reasonably considered voluntary. In a lively follow-up discussion the themes were then extended also towards related methodological issues such as convenient criteria for assessing quality of research and evidence by policy-makers or the dilemmas regarding operationalizing the concept of ethnicity in health research in general.

You can find more information on the work on marginalised Roma populations here. General information about the work of the CoHeReNt Network can be found by clicking here.
Further information on the event (in Slovak) and some pictures can be found here.

Have a look at our most recent articles on Roma health here, here, here and here.