Cultural Diversity In Health Illness

Written for all health care providers, this text promotes awareness of the dimensions and complexities involved in caring for people from culturally diverse backgrounds. The author through discussions of her own experiences, shows how cultural heritage can affect delivery and acceptance of health care and how professionals, when interacting with their clients, need to be aware of these issues in order to deliver safe and professional care. Traditional and alternative health care beliefs and practices from Asian American, African American, Hispanic, and American Indian perspectives are represented.

The sixth edition of this best-selling resource continues to teach nursing, health professions, medical and social science readers the importance of cultural competence and cultural awareness in the health care industry. The new edition will include revised organization to create a better flow of content, new content on gererational differences, updated chapter on health care delivery system, updated illustrations and tables and MediaLink icons. For undergraduate and graduate courses in patient care and basic health related profession programs, as well as medical, social work, and other health disciplines.

Australia is increasingly recognised as a multicultural and diverse society. Nationally, all accrediting bodies for allied health, nursing, midwifery and medical professions require tertiary educated students to be culturally safe with regards to cultural and social diversity. This text, drawing on experts from a range of disciplines, including public health, nursing and sociology, shows how the theory and practice of cultural safety can inform effective health care practices with all kinds of diverse populations. Part 1 explores key themes and concepts, including social determinants of health and cultural models of health and health care. There is a particular focus on how different models of health, including the biomedical and Indigenous perspectives, intersect in Australia today. Part 2 looks at culturally safe health care practice focusing on principles and practice as well as policy and advocacy. The authors consider the practices that can be most effective, including meaningful communication skills and cultural responsiveness. Part 3 examines the practice issues in working with diverse populations, including Indigenous Australians, Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Australians, Australians with disabilities, Australians of diverse sexual orientation and gender identity, and ageing Australians. Part 4 combines all learnings from Parts 1–3 into practical learning activities, assessments and feedback for learners engaging with this textbook. Culture, Diversity and Health in Australia is a sensitive, richly nuanced and comprehensive guide to effective health practice in Australia today and is a key reference text for either undergraduate or postgraduate students studying health care. It will also be of interest to professional health care practitioners and policy administrators.

"This book will examine what is meant by culture, the ways in which culture intersects with health issues, how public health efforts can benefit by understanding and working with cultural processes, and a brief selection of conceptual tools and research methods that are useful in identifying relationships between culture and health. The book will also include practical guidelines for incorporating cultural understanding in public health settings, and examples of programs where that has occurred"--

This fifth edition, well-known, cultural work continues to deepen and expand the reader's theory and sense of inquiry. The purpose, as in past editions, is to increase the reader's awareness of the "dimensions and complexities involved as we meet the health and illness needs of patients." Cultural competence is now mandated by the Joint Commission of Hospital Accreditation and the Health Care Financing Administration. The author uses the notion of a quilt as a theme, thereby imaging continuity from chapter to chapter. This book is intended for virtually anyone providing healthcare, but especially nurses and nursing students as we are constantly encountering cultural diversity. The author is successful in this effort. The twelve chapters are divided into three units. In the first the focus is on provider self-awareness, in the second cultural awareness, and in the third selected traditional views of health and illness. One example is Chapter 11, "Health and Illness in Hispanic America." There are eight very valuable appendixes including Suggested Course Outline and Suggested Course Activities. There is an extensive (20 page) bibliography and an impressive directory of alternative healthcare associations. As discussed by the author, the U.S. will continue to receive a significant portion of its population via immigration. Given that prediction, it is imperative that educators and those already in practice focus on initial and ongoing cultural competency. This evolving theory base has become obligatory for humane, ethical, and legal practice. Ongoing cultural shifts and new theory necessitate the new edition.

Cultural Diversity, Mental Health and Psychiatry explores how and why black and minority ethnic communities have little confidence in mental health services.

A "one size fits all" approach to health care doesn't work well, especially for America's extremely diverse population. This book provides a lively and accessible discussion of how and why a more flexible and culturally sensitive system of health care can—and must be—achieved. Notable anthropologist George Foster defined the first edition as "a very readable introductory text dealing with the sociocultural aspects of health," adding: "[T]he authors do a commendable job... . I have profited from reading The Cultural Context of Health, Illness, and Medicine". With engaging examples, minimal jargon, and updated scholarship, the second edition of The Cultural Context of Health, Illness, and Medicine offers a comprehensive guide to the practice of culturally sensitive health care. Readers will see America's biomedically dominated health care system in a new light as the book reveals the changes wrought by increasing cultural diversity, technological innovation, and developments in care delivery. Written by a sociologist and an anthropologist with direct, hands-on experience in the health services, the volume tracks culture's influence on and relationship to health, illness, and health-care delivery via an examination of social structure, medical systems, and the need for—and challenges to—culturally sensitive care. Cultural differences are situated against social-class differences and related health inequities, as well as different needs and challenges throughout the life course. In prescribing caring that is more holistic, culturally sensitive, and cost-effective, the work promotes awareness of pressing issues for health care professionals—and the people they serve.

Although health equity and diversity-focussed research has begun to gain momentum, there is still a paucity of research from health geographers that explicitly explores how geographic factors, such as place, space, scale, community, and location, inform multiple axes of difference. Such axes can include residential location, age, sex, gender, race/ethnicity, culture, religion, socio-economic status, marital status, sexual orientation, education level, and immigration status. Specifically focussing on Canada’s rapidly changing society, which is becoming increasingly pluralized and diverse, this book examines the place-health-diversity intersection in this national context. Health geographers are well positioned to offer a valuable contribution to diversity-focussed research because place is inextricably linked to differential experiences of health. For example, access to health care and health promoting services and resources is largely influenced by where one is physically and socially situated within the web of diversity. Furthermore, applying geographic concepts like place, in both the physical and social sense, allows researchers to explore multiple axes of difference simultaneously. Such geographic perspectives, as presented in this book, offer new insights into what makes diverse people, in diverse places, with access to diverse resources (un)healthy in different ways in Canada and beyond.