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Introduction to Public Health & Medical Anthropology
- Institution
- University Of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN)
The article is based on health care facilities and the use of medical anthropology.
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Introduction to Public Health & Medical Anthropology(Adapted from Applied Medical anthropology & Health Care,
http://catalogimages.wiley.com/images/db/pdf/9780470283554.excerpt.p
df)
Culture affects patients’ and providers’ perceptions of health conditions
and appropriate treatments. Culture also affects behaviours that expose
us to disease and the reasons prompting us to seek care, how we
describe our symptoms, and our compliance with treatments.
This makes culture central to diagnosis and an important issue for all of
the health professions. Improving health care requires attention to
cultural influences on health concerns, conditions, beliefs, and practices.
People’s health occurs within cultural systems that are concerned with
broader issues of well-being than addressed by physicians’ concerns
with disease and injury; we are also concerned with psychological,
social, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being.
As biomedicine shifts from a disease-focused approach to concepts with
health and well-being, cultural perspectives and cultural competency
emerge as central frameworks for improving care and policies that
influence health care.
Medical anthropology is the primary discipline addressing the interfaces
of medicine, culture, and health behaviour and incorporating cultural
perspectives into clinical settings and public health programs.
Health professionals need knowledge of culture and cross-cultural
relationship skills because health services are more effective when
responsive to cultural needs. Cross-cultural skills also are important in
relationships among providers of different cultures when, for example,
African American and Filipino nurses interact with each other or with
Anglo, Hispanic, or Hindu physicians/practitioners.
A knowledge of culture is also necessary for work in community settings,
such as collaborating with diverse groups and organizations to develop
culturally relevant public health programs.
Health care providers and patients are more effective in managing their
health and care with cultural awareness and the ability to manage the
numerous factors that affect well-being.
1
, What do health professionals—providers, researchers, social service
personnel, educators, and other “helping professionals”—need to know
about the effects of culture on health?
They all need systematic ways of studying cultural effects on health and
developing cultural competence. Cultural responsiveness is necessary
for providers, researchers, and educators if they are to be effective in
relating to others across the barriers of cultural differences.
The cultural perspectives of medical anthropology are essential for
providing competent care, effective community health programs, and
patient education.
For biomedicine to be effective, providers need to know whether a
patient views the physician as believable and trustworthy, the diagnosis
as acceptable, the symptoms as problematic, and the treatment as
accessible and effective.
The concept of culture is fundamental to understanding health and
medicine because personal health behaviours and professional practices
of medicine are deeply influenced by culture.
Culture involves the learned patterns of shared group behavior. These
learned shared behaviours are the framework for understanding and
explaining all human behaviour. This includes health behaviours,
particularly intergroup differences in health behaviours
and beliefs.
Culture is a principal determinant of health conditions, particularly in
exposing us to or protecting us from diseases through structuring our
interactions with the physical and social environments: for example,
through producing environmental contamination, work activities, contact
with animals, sexual practices, diet, clothing, hygienic practices, and
others.
Culture also defines the kinds of health problems that exist and
the resources for responding to health concerns, defining our
perceptions, and producing the resources for responding to them.
Cultural knowledge is also essential for addressing public health
mandates to assess communities’ health needs, develop appropriate
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