• 1. Ethnomedicine: the study of cross cultural health systems
• 2. Interpretive medical anthropology: emphasizes that cultural systems, including medical systems are symbolic; asks how society's understanding of and responses to diseases shaped by cultural assumptions
• 3. Explanatory model: constitutes health belief systems that generally fall into two categories
- Personalistic belief system: explain sickness as the result of supernatural forces directed at a patient
- Naturalistic belief system: explain sickness in terms of natural forces
• 4. Biocultural approach: the relationship between organisms, interaction between sociocultural patterns and the biological and environmental parameters within hu-man operates, and it draws upon evolutionary theory and the concept of adaption
• 5. Critical medical anthropological approach: ask how the distribution of wealth and power and the division of labor affect disease patterns and healthcare access
- Cultural context: cultural background has an important influence on people's beliefs, behaviours, religions, family structure, diet, body image, and attitudes to illness all of which may have important implications for health an health care
• Individual factors: age, sex, gender, personality, intelligence, experience, physical or emotional state
• Educational factors: formal and informal education, education into a religious, eth¬nic, or professional subculture
• Socioeconomic factors: poverty, social class, economic status, unemployment, dis-crimination or racism, and the networks of social support from other people
• Environmental factors: weather, population density or pollution of the habitat, hous-ing, roads, bridges, water and sanitation, public transport and healthcare facilities
- Diseases vs Illness
• Diseases: a discrete, natural entity that can be clinically identified and treated by a biomedical health practitioners
- may be caused genetically or through infection by bacteria, viruses, or parasites
• Illness: the individual patient's experience of sickness or feeling of pain; the cultur¬ally defined understanding of diseases
- Includes the way he/she feels about it, talks about it, thinks about it, and experi-ences it within a particular cultural context
- Healthy public policy: an explicit concern for health and equity in all areas of policy and accountability for health impact
• Characteristics of healthy public policy:
- commitment to social inequality
- recognition of the important influence of economic, social, and physical environ-ment on health
- facilitation of public participation
- co-operation between health and other sectors of government
• Objectives and goals:
- achieving the goal of health equity by narrowing the health gap in society
- using appropriate policies that attach high priority to disadvantaged and vulnera-ble groups
- getting government stakeholders involved
• 2. Interpretive medical anthropology: emphasizes that cultural systems, including medical systems are symbolic; asks how society's understanding of and responses to diseases shaped by cultural assumptions
• 3. Explanatory model: constitutes health belief systems that generally fall into two categories
- Personalistic belief system: explain sickness as the result of supernatural forces directed at a patient
- Naturalistic belief system: explain sickness in terms of natural forces
• 4. Biocultural approach: the relationship between organisms, interaction between sociocultural patterns and the biological and environmental parameters within hu-man operates, and it draws upon evolutionary theory and the concept of adaption
• 5. Critical medical anthropological approach: ask how the distribution of wealth and power and the division of labor affect disease patterns and healthcare access
- Cultural context: cultural background has an important influence on people's beliefs, behaviours, religions, family structure, diet, body image, and attitudes to illness all of which may have important implications for health an health care
• Individual factors: age, sex, gender, personality, intelligence, experience, physical or emotional state
• Educational factors: formal and informal education, education into a religious, eth¬nic, or professional subculture
• Socioeconomic factors: poverty, social class, economic status, unemployment, dis-crimination or racism, and the networks of social support from other people
• Environmental factors: weather, population density or pollution of the habitat, hous-ing, roads, bridges, water and sanitation, public transport and healthcare facilities
- Diseases vs Illness
• Diseases: a discrete, natural entity that can be clinically identified and treated by a biomedical health practitioners
- may be caused genetically or through infection by bacteria, viruses, or parasites
• Illness: the individual patient's experience of sickness or feeling of pain; the cultur¬ally defined understanding of diseases
- Includes the way he/she feels about it, talks about it, thinks about it, and experi-ences it within a particular cultural context
- Healthy public policy: an explicit concern for health and equity in all areas of policy and accountability for health impact
• Characteristics of healthy public policy:
- commitment to social inequality
- recognition of the important influence of economic, social, and physical environ-ment on health
- facilitation of public participation
- co-operation between health and other sectors of government
• Objectives and goals:
- achieving the goal of health equity by narrowing the health gap in society
- using appropriate policies that attach high priority to disadvantaged and vulnera-ble groups
- getting government stakeholders involved
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