Anthropological Perspectives on Medicine and Public Health

Abstract

Some cultural anthropologists, when they do health-related research, investigate the role of sociocultural factors in the origin and prevalence of specific disease entities, particularly among ethnic minorities and people of divergent cultures. Others study the effect of cultural and social dif ferences on the outcome of public-health programs carried out in intercultural settings. Directors of health programs, as agents of social change and community development, should understand the nature of certain gaps that recurrently impede realization of program objectives. One is the cultural gap, which complicates communication and leads to the selective acceptance of offered innovations, owing to differences in cultural values and in culturally conditioned assumptions about the cause of illness. Another is the status gap between the health team and the public and between the ruling elites and their people. Still another is the urban-adjustment gap created by the influx of rural population into the cities. Com pared to the sums of money spent on basic medical research and program operations in the field, the amount available for studying the human aspects of health-improvement programs and other phases of community development is disappointingly small. This imbalance constitutes the research gap.

Culture and health-related schemas: A review and proposal for interdisciplinary integration.

“…The attribution of illness to various forms of misconduct is a form of social control that reinforces and maintains behavioral norms (Adams & Rubel, 1967;Hallowell, 1963;Paul, 1963) by linking health to goodness and conformity and associating illness with deviance, evil, and sin. In such an etiological model, the victim and the transgressor need not be the same person.…”

Oficina de comunicación a distancia del Hospital de Pediatría “Prof. Dr. Juan P. Garrahan” – más de 20 años construyendo telemedicina = Outreach Communication Office of Hospital de Pediatría “Prof. Dr. Juan P. Garrahan” – more than 20 years building telemedicine

“…Fue así que rápidamente la OCD se visualiza como una herramienta para mejorar los canales de comunicación del equipo de salud. Resulta interesante, haciendo referencia a lo que refleja Benjamin Paul (1963) "Perspectivas antropológicas en medicina y salud pública", quien señala que uno de los obstáculos que impiden el logro de los objetivos de los programas de salud es la distancia cultural, así como la diferencia de estatus socio económico y político entre personal médico y la comunidad destinataria de las acciones de salud, como este modelo logró sortear estos inconvenientes por medio de diferentes estrategias sostenidas desde los inicios que se sustentaron y lo siguen haciendo en los cinco niveles del proceso de construcción de redes que menciona Mario Rovere (2006) en su publicación Redes en salud; un nuevo paradigma para el abordaje de las organizaciones y la comunidad que son el reconocimiento, el conocimiento, la colaboración, la cooperación y la asociación.…”

Medicine and politics: the convergence from a Nigerian perspective

“…This is because, since politics is about leadership, it would be required that those who aspire to practice it should possess the learnable behavioural attributes of leadership. Failure to possess these attributes manifests in a leadership or status gap (Paul, 1963). Hence Sagay (2013), advocates for good leadership as the only way to save Nigeria.…”