[6] Much of his work since the latter 1980s has been related to AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases, primarily in Africa, but also in Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
In March 2009 Green's comments were widely quoted in the media when he publicly agreed with Pope Benedict XVI's claim that the distribution of condoms was not helping and might be aggravating the problem of the spread of AIDS in southern and east Africa.
[7] For his dissertation ethnographic research in the early 1970s, Green spent two years living with the Matawai [8] Maroons of Suriname, descendants of escaped African slaves.
He has written the following three books on these topics: Practicing Development Anthropology (1986),[9] AIDS And STDs in Africa: Bridging the Gap Between Traditional Healing and Modern Medicine (1994),[10] and Indigenous Theories of Contagious Disease (1999).
[11] Regarding the last, Prof. Charles Good wrote in Ethnology and reprinted on Amazon.com, "Green ranks among the foremost practitioners of applied medical anthropology who work in developing societies.
His focused contract work and extensive published scholarship reflect a strong commitment to separating myth from reality in public health and medical pluralism."
Green summarizes the book's thesis as follows: "The largely medical solutions funded by major donors have had little impact in Africa, the continent hardest hit by AIDS.
Instead, relatively simple, low-cost behavioral change programs--stressing increased monogamy and delayed sexual activity for young people--have made the greatest headway in fighting or preventing the disease's spread.
"[12] A review of Rethinking AIDS Prevention in the Journal of the American Medical Association stated: "If Green’s analysis is correct, we are faced with a troubling paradox: while our technologically sophisticated system often operates at the margin of acceptable cost efficacy, halfway around the world, secular bias and biomedical fiscal power are responsible for discouraging and discrediting simple yet effective solutions, at the cost of millions of lives.
"[13] In March 2009, Green generated controversy when he supported a remark from Pope Benedict XVI about the role of promoting use of condoms among sexually active persons to prevent AIDS in Africa.
In a mid-flight news conference en route to Cameroon, Pope Benedict had said: "If the soul is lacking, if Africans do not help one another, the scourge cannot be resolved by distributing condoms; quite the contrary, we risk worsening the problem.
Strategies that break up... sexual networks -- or, in plain language, faithful mutual monogamy or at least reduction in numbers of partners, especially concurrent ones."
Upon the conclusion of the Harvard AIDS Prevention Research Project grant in April 2010, Dr. Green established the New Paradigm Fund [1] to identify, develop and share superior models for addressing the problems associated with AIDS, addiction, rain forest and primate conservation, and aspects of poverty associated with stateless and minority peoples.
In 2016, with funding from the Wenner Gren Foundation, the “Edward C. Green papers, circa 1970-2016” were processed through the National Anthropological Archives at the Smithsonian Institution.
In addition, sound recordings, including music and field interviews among the Matawai Maroons (descendants of Africa slaves who escaped from the coastal plantations in the 17-18th centuries) of Suriname, have been digitized and can be streamed online.