The Cultural Context of Health, Illness, and Medicine

Subjects:

• Health/Medicine » Public Health

Reviews:

• The authors use no jargon and require little or no background in the social sciences to achieve an understanding of health and illness from a social science perspective. General readers and undergraduates.
  —Choice
• ...Loustaunau and Sobo do an impressive job of indentifying and untangling the myriad elements that compose American health care, from both a health-seeking and health-providing perspective....An 'Introduction to Medical Anthropology' course syllabus that includes The The Cultural Context of Health, Illness, and Medicine and the recently published Understanding and Applying Medical Anthropology (Brown, 1998) would offer students a comprehensive foray into the field and critically position them to understand the complexities of health, health care and wellness both at home and abroad.
  —Transcultural Psychiatry
• A very readable introductory text dealing with the sociocultural aspects of health.
  —Sociocultural Anthropology

• Endorsement From Judith N. Lasker
  Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Lehigh University: A very thorough and comprehensive text to introduce students and practitioners to the rich insights about health and medical care which have come out of research in medical sociology and anthropology. This book will provide laypeople as well as professionals with a deeper and much-needed undestanding of the varieties of beliefs and behaviors which influence health and health care.
• Endorsement From Lawrence A. Palinkas, Ph.D.
  Professor of Family and Preventive Medicine
  University of California, San Diego: Over the years, there have been several texts which introduce the reader to the fields of medical sociology or medical anthropology, but none have been as successful in bringing the two fields together in as clear and engaging a manner as this book....This book will undoubtedly become standard reading for medical students, physicians and other health care providers who serve multicultural, medically underserved populations.

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