The concept of culture: a core issue in health disparities.

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  • Author(s): Page JB;Page JB
  • Source:
    Journal of urban health : bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine [J Urban Health] 2005 Jun; Vol. 82 (2 Suppl 3), pp. iii35-43.
  • Publication Type:
    Journal Article; Review
  • Language:
    English
  • Additional Information
    • Source:
      Publisher: Springer Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 9809909 Publication Model: Print Cited Medium: Print ISSN: 1099-3460 (Print) Linking ISSN: 10993460 NLM ISO Abbreviation: J Urban Health Subsets: MEDLINE
    • Publication Information:
      Publication: 2006- : New York, NY : Springer
      Original Publication: Cary, NC : Oxford University Press for the New York Academy of Medicine, c1998-
    • Subject Terms:
      Behavioral Research* ; Culture* ; Health Services Research* ; Health Status Indicators* ; Socioeconomic Factors*; HIV Infections/ethnology ; Health Behavior/ethnology ; Health Services Accessibility ; Hispanic or Latino/ethnology ; Humans ; Substance-Related Disorders/ethnology ; United States
    • Abstract:
      Contemporary discourse contains numerous examples of use of the concept of culture by social and behavioral scientists. Simple reification, where the speaker makes culture into a thing capable of action exemplifies one usage in public discourse. Some quantitative social scientists attempt to characterize people's cultural identities by means of a single categorical variable, which often "lumps" people into categories such as "Hispanic" or "Black" that in fact have numerous culturally bounded subcategories. Approaches that emphasize cultural process are preferable to those who attempt to categorize; more complex measures of acculturation help investigators to make convincing analyses of circumstances in which health disparities occur. Examples in which investigators make appropriate use of cultural characterizations demonstrate their utility in investigating health disparities in Haitian American women, injecting and noninjecting drug users, Hispanic youth, and adult Hispanics at risk of HIV infection. Focus on culture in the study of health disparities can identify entanglements between structural factors such as poverty and lack of education and cultural factors such as beliefs about health. Qualitative methods coupled with quantitative methods have great potential to improve investigators' grasp of cultural nuance while capturing the distribution of qualitatively derived behaviors.
    • Number of References:
      34
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    • Publication Date:
      Date Created: 20050604 Date Completed: 20060620 Latest Revision: 20240505
    • Publication Date:
      20240505
    • Accession Number:
      PMC3455896
    • Accession Number:
      10.1093/jurban/jti062
    • Accession Number:
      15933329