Diane Weiner - Böcker

This multidisciplinary analysis links epidemiologic, cultural, social, and medical analyses of cancer prevention, detection, and care. The contributors demonstrate that different ethnic groups and cultures have distinct concepts of cancer prevention and control. These ideas are dynamic, shaped by personal and group histories, social networks, technologies, politics, economics, religions, linguistics, and other environmental conditions.Cross-cultural writings about cancer make this book useful to professionals and students in the disciplines of medicine, nursing, public health, sociology, anthropology, and social welfare. The 15 articles reveal that cancer knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors are diverse cross-cultural constructs resulting from distinct experiences. Ideas and behaviors about prevention and control may be shared or individual and idiosyncratic. The book is composed of three sections: I. Cancer Beliefs and Behaviors; II. Interventions in Review; III. New Strategies for Cancer Research. The authors, including anthropologists, epidemiologists, health educators, nurses, and physicians, explicate notions of prevention and control, and assess interventions and methodologies that illustrate generally ignored successes in decreased mortality and morbidity among members of specific populations.

Improving the dire health problems faced by many Native American communities is central to their cultural, political, and economic well being. However, it is still too often the case that both theoretical studies and applied programs fail to account for Native American perspectives on the range of factors that actually contribute to these problems in the first place. The authors in Medicine Ways examine the ways people from a multitude of indigenous communities think about and practice health care within historical and socio-cultural contexts. Cultural and physical survival are inseparable for Native Americans. Chapters explore biomedically-identified diseases, such as cancer and diabetes, as well as Native-identified problems, including historical and contemporary experiences such as forced evacuation, assimilation, boarding school, poverty and a slew of federal and state policies and initiatives. They also explore applied solutions that are based in community prerogatives and worldviews, whether they be indigenous, Christian, biomedical, or some combination of all three. Medicine Ways is an important volume for scholars and students in Native American studies, medical anthropology, and sociology as well as for health practitioners and professionals working in and for tribes. Visit the UCLA American Indian Studies Center web site