Julia DeBruicker
Fellowships Awarded: 2009, 2008, 2007
Julia DeBruicker, MHS, is examining how the market for meat in the United States is evolving in light of emerging standards such as free range, organic, grass fed and natural. A focus on farmers orients the research. One goal of her research is to learn how farmers who raise livestock to meet these new specifications take up this line of work, and how these farmers fare within a landscape resonant with social movements, relationships, economics and policy. Through an ethnographic study in Indiana, she will prepare a blueprint for how the movement surrounding these classes of meat, and its underlying determinants, can contribute to the agricultural and food policy agenda that the field of public health is developing. Her faculty advisor is Peter Winch, associate professor of Social and Behavioral Interventions in the Department of International Health.