Cultural Issues for Health Care Professionals
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How do race, class, gender, and sexuality affect our health, our beliefs about health care, our access to good medical care, and our ability to provide quality care to others? Designed for future health care providers in pharmacy, medicine, nursing, and related fields, the core seminar of this FIG introduces students to the importance of culture, inequality, and social justice in health, health care practices, and the health care professions. We will explore differences in perceptions, beliefs, and traditions as they relate to defining and treating illness and promoting health. Beyond cultural differences in approaches to health care, we will study how social inequalities give some social groups more access to health care and its benefits, while they create barriers to health care access for others. We will examine how these inequalities, combined with cultural differences, result in differential patterns of disease across groups, as with type-2 diabetes and hypertension. Finally, we will explore the experiences of minority health care providers and look at how cultural differences affect both interactions with patients and interactions with colleagues in health care settings. The course will center on lively discussion of assigned readings, visits to area health care facilities, and conversations with health care practitioners and students. Throughout, we will pay attention to our own health and wellness practices, given that each person is his or her own "first patient." "Introduction to Cultural Anthropology" will provide a contextual background for our understanding of culture and cultural differences; in "General Chemistry" students will gain some basic understanding of chemical processes and terminology necessary for continued study of chemistry and the biological sciences.

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