How Do You Build a "Culture of Health"? A Critical Analysis of Challenges and Opportunities from Medical Anthropology

Katherine A Mason; Sarah S Willen; Seth M Holmes; Denise A Herd; Mark Nichter; Heide Castañeda; Helena Hansen

doi:10.1089/pop.2019.0179

How Do You Build a "Culture of Health"? A Critical Analysis of Challenges and Opportunities from Medical Anthropology

Popul Health Manag. 2020 Dec;23(6):476-481. doi: 10.1089/pop.2019.0179. Epub 2020 Jan 13.

Authors

Katherine A Mason¹, Sarah S Willen², Seth M Holmes^{3

4}, Denise A Herd⁵, Mark Nichter⁶, Heide Castañeda⁷, Helena Hansen⁸

Affiliations

¹ Department of Anthropology, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA.
² Department of Anthropology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, USA.
³ Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management and Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA.
⁴ Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA.
⁵ School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA.
⁶ School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA.
⁷ Department of Anthropology, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA.
⁸ Department of Anthropology, and Department of Psychiatry, New York University, New York, New York, USA.

Abstract

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Culture of Health Action Framework aims to "make health a shared value" and improve population health equity through widespread culture change. The authors draw upon their expertise as anthropologists to identify 3 challenges that they believe must be addressed in order to effectively achieve the health equity and population health improvement goals of the Culture of Health initiative: clarifying and demystifying the concept of "culture," contextualizing "community" within networks of power and inequality, and confronting the crises of trust and solidarity in the contemporary United States. The authors suggest that those who seek to build a "Culture of Health" refine their understanding of how "culture" is experienced, advocate for policies and practices that break down unhealthy consolidations of power, and innovate solutions to building consensus in a divided nation.

Keywords: anthropology; culture of health; health equity.

Publication types

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Anthropology, Medical
Health Equity*
Humans
Population Health*
United States

Grants and funding

P2C HD041020/HD/NICHD NIH HHS/United States