The Relationship Between Culture, Health Conceptions, and Health Practices

Abstract

This study investigated cultural variations in health conceptions and practices using a quasiexperimental design. A total of 60 participants, recruited from three cultural groups in Canada, were individually interviewed between the fall of 2009 and the fall of 2010. Transcribed interviews were quantified according to the importance participants ascribed to emergent themes. The data generated three intriguing findings: (a) Consistent with an interdependent self-construal or ecological self, First Nations participants were more likely to report health conceptions and practices that expand beyond the individual self to include their family, the community, and the environment when compared with Anglophones and Francophones of European ancestry; (b) First Nations participants placed more importance on maintaining their traditions and culture as a health-promoting strategy, compared with Anglophones and Francophones; and (c) some of the health conceptions identified by all three groups significantly predicted the practices they engage in to promote health. These findings suggest that culture has a noticeable impact on health conceptions, which in turn influence health practices. There are at least two important implications: (a) Health policy makers need to take into account the role culture plays in the way people conceptualize health to ensure that health policies and programs reflect the particular beliefs and needs of their target populations and (b) health-care professionals need to be aware of the diverse views of their patients to provide culturally appropriate care.

Improving inclusion in rural health services for marginalised community members: Developing a process for change

“…Mainstream health services need to become safe and enabling environments, offering respectful, quality care that recognises the lived social and cultural experiences of [diverse patients]. (Durey et al, 2013, p. 722) In order to respond optimally to the health care needs of patients, health services must be able to recognise the unique cultural and social positionalities of their patients/clients and tailor care accordingly, especially for marginalised residents (Levesque & Li, 2014;Torsch & Ma, 2000). To do this, mainstream health services need to develop reflexivity about how dominant cultures and power relations operate within health institutions, inform dominant practices, and exclude patients/clients from a diverse range of cultures and with heterogeneous identities.…”

“…Culture plays a defining role in human perception and experience (Kleinman & Benson, 2006;Levesque & Li, 2014). An essential component of providing culturally inclusive health care is thus the recognition within health institutions and by health professions that all humans are cultural beings, and that power situates individuals differently depending on the intersection of various socially constructed categories to which individuals are assigned in their particular historical and cultural contexts (Maynard, 2001;Munro, 2003).…”

“…Through dominant discourses, such as sameness and clinical neutrality, power normalises certain actions and certain health practices as acceptable and guides people to act accordingly (Amigot & Pujal, 2009;Foucault, 1991Foucault, , 1995Foucault & Gordon, 1980). However, normalised health service practices ignore individual needs (Foucault, 2004;Levesque & Li, 2014) and can negatively shape patient experience (Foucault & Gordon, 1980;Scott, 1991).…”

“…Health service providers are also influenced by broader dominant societal discourses. White privilege and class blindness (Downing & Kowal, 2011;Levesque & Li, 2014;Navarro, 2009), as well as health service and biomedical discourses of sameness and clinical neutrality (Baum, Laris, Fisher, Newman & MacDougall, 2013;Foucault, 2004;Grant & Luxford, 2011), shapes these actors. Together, these discourses produce certain perceptions of reality and normalise certain actions, which, we suggest, are critical to deconstructing the mechanisms through which exclusion occurs within mainstream health services.…”

“…heterogeneous identities , including identities that are systemically marginalised on a socio-structural level, and specifically in the mainstream health care sector (Durey 2010(Durey , 2015Durey, Lin & Thompson 2013;Edwards & Cheers 2007;Fredericks 2010;Levesque & Li 2014;Navarro 2009). The precise makeup of rural communities across Australia does vary.…”