The Cultural Context of Health, Illness, and Medicine

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Martha O. Loustaunau, Elisa J. Sobo

ISBN: 0-89789-548-7

ISBN-13: 978-0-89789-548-4

DOI:

232 pages

Praeger Publishers

Publication: 11/30/1997

List Price: $36.95 (UK Sterling Price: £25.95)

Availability: Print on demand

Media Type: Paperback

Subjects:

Health/Medicine » Public Health

Description: Summarizing the vast literature on culture and caring in a lively and jargon-free fashion, sociologist Martha O. Loustaunau and anthropologist Elisa J. Sobo introduce readers to the practice of culturally sensitive health care. With engaging examples, they describe the special approaches sociologists and anthropologists take to health, clearly illustrating the main concepts used in the two fields. Loustaunau and Sobo demonstrate the ways in which cultural and social factors shape medicine and health care. After a discussion of culture, the social structure and the impact of poverty, class, gender, and family patterns on health, illness and care-seeking, they explain the similarities and differences of medical systems cross-culturally. The authors call for a more flexible and culturally sensitive system of health care that expresses caring in more holistic ways, and offer examples as to how this might be accomplished in the increasingly multicultural USA.

Clinicians are cautioned against making ethnocentric value judgments and encouraged to recognize patient behaviors that are culturally patterned. Current issues discussed include HIV/AIDS, ethics, alternative medicine, political and economic forces, and the high cost of health care today, all with regard to cultural context.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
The Concept of Culture
The Health-Related Consequences of Social Structure
Health and Illness Over the Life Course
Therapeutic Modalities: A Cross-Cultural Perspective
Biomedicine: History, Culture, and Change
Gathering and Interpreting Cultural Information: The Communication of Meaning
Application and Integration: Contemporary Challenges
Appendix: Resources for Cultural Assessment and Achieving Cultural Sensitivity
Bibliography
Index

About the Author: MARTHA O. LOUSTAUNAU is a Medical Sociologist in the Department of Sociology/Anthropology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces.

ELISA J. SOBO is a Medical Anthropologist in Cancer Prevention and Control at the University of California, San Diego.

LCC Class: 306


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