Cultural Contexts of Health

Download or read book Cultural Contexts of Health written by Centers of Disease Control and published by Health Evidence Network Synthe. This book was released on 2016-10-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Storytelling is an essential tool for reporting and illuminating the cultural contexts of health: the practices and behavior that groups of people share and that are defined by customs, language, and geography. This report reviews the literature on narrative research, offers some quality criteria for appraising it, and gives three detailed case examples: diet and nutrition, well-being, and mental health in refugees and asylum seekers. Storytelling and story interpretation belong to the humanistic disciplines and are not a pure science, although established techniques of social science can be applied to ensure rigor in sampling and data analysis. The case studies illustrate how narrative research can convey the individual experience of illness and well-being, thereby complementing and sometimes challenging epidemiological and public health evidence.