Culture and Health: Applying Medical Anthropology [Paperback]

Culture and Health offers an overview of different areas of culture and health, building on foundations of medical anthropology and health behavior theory. It shows how to address the challenges of cross-cultural medicine through interdisciplinary cultural-ecological models and personal and institutional developmental approaches to cross-cultural adaptation and competency. The book addresses the perspectives of clinically applied anthropology, trans-cultural psychiatry and the medical ecology, critical medical anthropology and symbolic paradigms as frameworks for enhanced comprehension of health and the medical encounter. Includes cultural case studies, applied vignettes, and self-assessments.Figures, Tables, and Exhibits.

Special Features.

Preface.

Medical Anthropology’s Perspectives.

Chapter Overviews.

Special Features of the Text.

Dedication.

The Author.

Acknowledgments.

ONE: APPLIED MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND HEALTH CARE.

Culture and Health.

Culture, Ethnomedicines, and Biomedicine.

Cultural Competence in the Health Professions.

Concepts of Health.

Systems Approaches to Health.

Chapter Summary.

TWO: DISEASE, ILLNESS, SICKNESS, AND THE SICK ROLE.

Experience of Maladies.

Biomedical Assumptions About Disease.

Social Models of Maladies and Diagnoses.

Illness and Sickness Accounts.

The Sick Role and Sickness Career.

AIDS as Disease, Sickness, and Illness.

Health Beliefs and Explanatory Models.

Chapter Summary.

THREE: CULTURAL COMPETENCE IN HEALTH CARE.