Dressler, William W., Mauro C. Balieiro, Rosane P. Ribeiro and José Ernesto dos Santos. (2015) Culture as a mediator of health disparities. Annals of Anthropological Practice 38: 214-231 (original) (raw)

Culture as an explanation in population health

Annals of Human Biology, 2009

In the last two decades, culture has emerged in population health as a common explanation for health outcomes and disparities. This paper systematically reviews such cultural accounts, focusing on a historical sample of articles from prominent population health journals (1930Á2008, n 0100) and a contemporary sample of articles in the American Journal of Public Health (2008, n 095). The review reveals that references to culture rarely (1) specify the precise pathways by which culture influences health or (2) assess the plausibility of these pathways. Despite these weaknesses, a few studies have begun to clarify, measure, and assess how culture can influence health outcomes, and these articles reflect promising new avenues for understanding how cultural factors influence variation in health and well-being.

Culture, health, and inequalities: new paradigms, new practice imperatives

Journal of Research in Nursing, 2008

This paper builds upon insights from a programme of research on culture and health that is informed by critical theoretical perspectives. The evidence generated through this research programme is drawn upon to critically examine the assumptions about the prevailing understandings of the links between culture, health, and health inequalities and to illustrate the need for new paradigms of practice. Using the case of children at risk because of their social, cultural, and material circumstances, the tenets of an alternative model of health care practice, the RICH-ER (Responsive, Intersectoral-Interdisciplinary, Child Health -Education and Research) model was introduced and studied.

Cultural Differences and Health

.In recent years, the biopsychosocial approach to health has combined the World Health Organization’s (WHO) definition of ‘health’ as “a complete state of physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” and the current definition of ‘culture’ as “the thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs, values, and institutions of racial, ethnic, religious, or social groups”; to form a more complex and multidimensional concept of health as a complete state of physical, mental, and social well-being in which individuals are increasingly viewed as part of a larger network of forces, significantly influenced by their ‘culture’ or socio-cultural environments (Uskul & Sherman, 2009; Ritter & Hoffman, 2008). This paper explores the effect of culture on health by examining and differentiating between the belief structures and traditions in healing and death of two American ethnic groups: American Indians and Amish Americans.

Culture and health

The Lancet, 2014

Planned and unplanned migrations, diverse social practices, and emerging disease vectors transform how health and wellbeing are understood and negotiated. Simultaneously, familiar illnesses-both communicable and non-communicable-continue to aff ect individual health and household, community, and state economies. Together, these forces shape medical knowledge and how it is understood, how it comes to be valued, and when and how it is adopted and applied.

Introduction: Biocultural Contributions to the Study of Health Disparities

Annals of Anthropological Practice, 2014

The study of health disparities has emerged as an important theme in public health and the social sciences, and efforts to eliminate health disparities are a major thrust of governments and nongovernmental organizations in the United States and abroad. Initially, much work focused on identifying disparities with less emphasis on the contexts that create these disparities. An important shift over the past two decades has been the widespread recognition that health disparities have their roots in social and economic inequalities. Indeed, the World Health Organization (WHO) chose a theme issue on inequalities in health as the first issue for a new century and millennium. In an editorial for that issue, editor-in-chief Richard Feachem stated that "the gap in health between rich and poor. .. (and) between other advantaged and disadvantaged groups defined, for example, by ethnicity, caste, or place of residence. .. constitutes one of the greatest challenges of the new century" (Feachem 2000:1). This reality and the negative synergisms between inequalities and health have not diminished in the past decade and in many ways have grown. In our current era of global capitalism, growing inequalities and unacceptably high levels of strife, hunger, malnutrition, and disease, there is a need for approaches that link human biology and health to social, cultural, and political-economic dynamics. Biocultural approaches to health can provide a fuller understanding of the ways largescale forces and local-level lived realities "get under the skin." The premise that human health and health disparities are shaped by interwoven biocultural processes operating at multiple levels, and best understood through the combination of humanistic and scientific perspectives, is a foundational principle of medical anthropology. Yet biocultural approaches in medical anthropology have not always sought to link the local to broader global forces and provide an ethnographic lens on the lived realities and vulnerabilities in people's everyday lives. A more critical biocultural medical anthropology (Leatherman and Goodman 2011) has emerged to provide a framework for connecting history, political economy, and local biologies and health. This collection of papers represents approaches to better understand health inequities from biocultural and critical biocultural perspectives. Biocultural anthropologists have been addressing issues of inequalities and health for decades in multiple environments

Editorial: Health (in)equity - examinations of the role of culture and trust

Frontiers in Public Health, 2022

Editorial on the Research Topic Health (in)equity-examinations of the role of culture and trust Our health throughout the life course is a peculiar, individualized interaction of nature and nurture. Achievements in science have provided an improved understanding of the role of genetics and environment contribute to disease and disability, and biomedical interventions have often been able to provide the prospect of bringing a person back to full health or living with the disease with reduced discomfort. Nevertheless, how sociocultural behaviors and environmental factors (nurture) can trigger biological and genetic processes (nature), not just the other way around, has been largely neglected (1-4). New approaches to boundaries between internal and external environments, health and disease, and social and biological are needed to merge the gaps while contributing to the understanding of the influence of socioeconomic factors on health (1). Global migrations, changes in the demographic and cultural profile of countries, emerging disease vectors, and communicable and non-communicable illnesses are just some of the issues that in the last several decades have spurred the growth of multidisciplinary attention on the importance of culture to health. Cultural and linguistic diversity, socioeconomic differences in healthcare utilization, the technologization of health, and the degree of empowerment of patients to make their own decision, all these issues raised awareness of how inseparable health is from culturally affected perceptions of wellbeing and integration, and how understanding culture is imperative to the advancement of health worldwide. For example, ethnic/racial minority communities experience worse health outcomes due to underutilization of healthcare services as a result of language barriers, differences in the cultural understanding of health, healthcare and health-seeking behavior, the inability of the healthcare system and workforce to identify and understand the specific needs and circumstances of the patient, among other factors (5, 6). According to MBRRACE-UK-Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the UK-last report, Black and Asian Ethnic Women in the U.K. are 5 and 2 times more likely to die during pregnancy and after childbirth compared to White Women (7). However, behind

Culture, inequality, and health: evidence from the MIDUS and MIDJA comparison

Culture and Brain, 2015

This article seeks to forge scientific connections between three overarching themes (culture, inequality, health). Although the influence of cultural context on human experience has gained notable research prominence, it has rarely embraced another large arena of science focused on the influence social hierarchies have on how well and how long people live. That literature is increasingly focused psychosocial factors, working interactively with biological and brain-based mechanisms, to account for why those with low socioeconomic standing have poorer health. Our central question is whether and how these processes might vary by cultural context. We draw on emerging findings from two parallel studies, Midlife in