Emily Wentzell, professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Iowa, has published a book about health research participation in a city in Mexico.

The book, titled, "Collective Biologies: Healing Social Ills through Sexual Health Research in Mexico," explores how people can use individual health behaviors such as participating in medical research to enhance group well-being amid crisis and change. Wentzell analyzed a longitudinal study of human papillomavirus (HPV) occurrence in men in Cuernavaca, Mexico, a city destabilized by pre- pandemic economic and narcoviolence crises.

"In this book, I analyze the ways that people’s experiences of belonging in culturally recognizable groups, such as couples and congregations, shape their daily life actions and, in turn, influence collective well-being," Wentzell writes. "I investigate how people’s beliefs about the boundaries and contours of their own relationships with specific sets of others have embodied consequences for those others."

The book has been published by Duke University Press.