The author is Adriana Petryna, who is an anthropologist and Professor of Anthropology at University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on the "public and private forms of scientific knowledge production, as well as on the role of science and technology in public policy". Her work doesn't specifically focus on emergency response, but more on the political and scientific developments that occur in a country after a disaster.
The methods used to produce the arguments in the article were ethnographic research, interviews with dozens of subjects suffering from epilepsy or similar disorder from several countries, and analysis of the subjects' narratives from psychological and anthropological viewpoints.
The argument is supported by findings from other research articles for HIV trends in impoverished populations in Baltimore in the 1990s, Partners in Health research in Rwanda and Haiti, and analyses of PIH's structural interventions (in "The Lessons of Baltimore, Haiti, and Rwanda" section).
1. Nobel Prize winner Joshua Lederberg noted the connections between global inequality and threats to U.S. health security: “World health is indivisible, [and] we cannot satisfy our most parochial needs without attending to the health conditions of all the globe.”
2.Erin Koch (chapter 5) describes the implementation of a TB-control program called DOTS (for “Directly-Observed Treatment, Short-Course”) in post-Soviet Georgia.
3. the problem of maintaining quality control over global food and drug production chains, as indicated by recent scandals over the regulation of ingredients for pet food, toothpaste, or blood thinner that are imported from China.
Research came from newspaper articles, surviving letters, and other texts were used to produce the argument in the report regarding disaster investigation.
The article describes the situation in post-Katrina New Orleans as one where trauma is constantly happening and more work is going into emergency response than recovery. Instead of construction workers, social workers and the like, the military was sent by the government for aid after Katrina.
The policy is to extend Good Samaritan laws to first responders so that they would not be liable for "spreading contamination while attempting to save lives."
Miriam Ticktin is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at The New School For Social Research in New York City. Her research focuses on "what it means to make political claims in the name of a universal humanity" and more recently looks at humanitarianism at various levels. For emergency response her work focuses more on response done for humanitarian aid and displaced peoples.
http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/faculty/?id=4d54-6379-4e44-4d35
Brian Concannon (executive director) and Beatrice Lindstrom (lawyer) of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, a nonprofit in Boston that fights for human rights on the island
Carrie Kahn is an international correspondent for NPR.
President Michel Martelly was the president of Haiti (from May 2011 to February 2016).
Ban Ki-moon; the 8th and current Secretary General of the United Nations.
Jake Johnston is a researcher "of the Washington-based Center for Economic Policy and Research"
Data was collected since the beginning of the ebola outbreak in 2014 till sometime in 2015 before the article was published.