HPRM7010
Culture and Health
Course Coordinator: Dr Megan Jennaway
Delivery Mode: Internal and External
Introduction
This course explores the cultural and social dimensions of health and illness in a wide variety of local and international contexts. Using perspectives informed by medical anthropology and health sociology, it examines cultural aspects of international health, cross-cultural interpretations of illness and the processes of medical syncretism to derive understandings and insights that can inform health interventions in global and local contexts.
Aims
The principal aims are: 1. to provide students with a deep understanding of the significance of cultural and social factors in relation to international health 2. to demonstrate the contribution medical anthropology and health social science can make to international health research and interventions 3. to appreciate the variety and specificity of cultural understandings of illness and health in diverse social settings 4. to introduce students to a comprehensive range of local cultural concepts and nosologies that have currency in non-Western settings and to explore avenues of integration or complimentarily with cosmopolitan medicine 5. to introduce students to the core qualitative methodologies used in cross-cultural research.
Content
Specific topics include:
- Anthropology, biomedicine and global health, Plural medicine and medical syncretism
- Transcultural psychiatry and ‘culture-bound’ disorders
- Cross-cultural constructions of health and illness
- Health care systems: sectoral and intersectoral approaches
- Cultural pharmacology: global and local medicine
- Illness, health and the body, and the patient as subject: theories of personhood
- Indigenous therapeutic systems: traditional healers and their qualifications
- Qualitative research methods and collaborative health interventions.
Assessment
There are two written assignments and a tutorial presentation.
Recommended texts
Hahn, R.A. (ed.) 1999 Anthropology in Public Health: Bridging Differences in Culture and Society. Oxford University Press: USA
Nichter, M. & Nichter, M. (eds.) 1996 Anthropology and International Health: Asian Case Studies. Gordon & Breach: USA
Resources
Study guide: This contains the week-by-week learning materials for each module. These include clear learning objectives, the required reading, introduction, a brief synopsis and key definitions, case studies, and then a series of practical exercises.
Online Blackboard site: This provides an interactive environment for you and teachers. Reliable and regular access to the Internet is required.
Further details are provided in the Course Profile: http://www.uq.edu.au/study/course.html?course_code=HPRM7010
Course Coordinator Contact Details
Dr Megan Jennaway
School of Population Health
University of Queensland
Herston Road
Herston
QLD 4006
AUSTRALIA
Phone: +61 7 3365 5408
Fax: +61 7 3365 5599
Email: m.jennaway@sph.uq.edu.au
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