Recognizing the significance of cultural aspects in the practice of medicine, this book places a strong emphasis on the social structure, customs, and history of the indigenous population and its ramifications on health care providers. The book also considers the econo-cultural influences on the way medicine is practiced. By including chapters that focus on health care's sudden advent as commodity and the microeconomic approach to public funding for health care facilities, the Nichters explore a world in which money and patients' expectations play an ever increasing role in the way health care is provided.

The Routledge Handbook of Anthropology and Global Health provides an overview of the complex relationship between anthropology and global health. The book brings together a diverse group of scholars who consider the intersection of anthropological concerns with health and disease as understood and intervened upon by the field of global health. The book is structured around five sections: (1) social, cultural, and political determinants of health; (2) knowledge production in anthropology and global health; (3) persistent invisibilities in global health; (4) reimagining a critical global health; and (5) new horizons in anthropology and global health. Over these five themes a range of topics is explored, including: rare diseases medical pluralism universal global health protocols HIV health security indigenous communities (non)communicable diseases decolonizing global health The Routledge Handbook of Anthropology and Global Health is an essential resource for upper-level students and researchers in anthropology, global health, sociology, international development, health studies, and politics.

International health planners often design programmes based on the assumption that recipient nations share the same level playing field with regard to conceptions of health, illness and at-risk populations. This volume analyzes why humanitarian projects fail to recognize ethnic identities.

A practical guide on how to conduct research on the impact of corporations on global health and global health governance, which draws on the theoretical and methodological insights of a range of scholarly disciplines.

Medical practitioners and the ordinary citizen are becoming more aware that we need to understand cultural variation in medical belief and practice. The more we know how health and disease are managed in different cultures, the more we can recognize what is "culture bound" in our own medical belief and practice. The Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology is unique because it is the first reference work to describe the cultural practices relevant to health in the world's cultures and to provide an overview of important topics in medical anthropology. No other single reference work comes close to marching the depth and breadth of information on the varying cultural background of health and illness around the world. More than 100 experts - anthropologists and other social scientists - have contributed their firsthand experience of medical cultures from around the world.

The purpose of this book is to provide an introduction and overview to the critical perspective as it has evolved in medical anthropology over the last ten years. Standing as an opposition approach to conventional medical anthropology, critical medical anthropology has emphasized the importance of political and economy forces, including the exercise of power, in shaping health, disease, illness experience, and health care.

Now in its third edition, this textbook serves to frame understandings of health, health-related behavior, and health care in light of social and health inequality as well as structural violence. It also examines how the exercise of power in the health arena and in society overall impacts human health and well-being. Medical Anthropology and the World System: Critical Perspectives, Third Edition includes updated and expanded information on medical anthropology, resulting in an even more comprehensive resource for undergraduate students, graduate students, and researchers worldwide. As in the previous versions of this text, the authors provide insights from the perspective of critical medical anthropology, a well-established theoretical viewpoint from which faculty, researchers, and students study medical anthropology. It addresses the nature and scope of medical anthropology; the biosocial and political ecological origins of disease, health inequities, and social suffering; and the nature of medical systems in indigenous and pre-capitalist state societies and modern societies. The third edition also includes new material on the relationship between climate change and health. Finally, this textbook explores health praxis and the struggle for a healthy world.

Virtually every school of public health teaches a global health course, yet the major textbooks provide little on the actual practice of international health. This new book comprises a series of vivid first person accounts in which physicians, epidemiologists, health workers, and public health professionals from around the world present the critical dilemmas and challenges facing the field. Aimed primarily at medical and public health students and professionals, this book will be a much-needed addition to the existing literature. Related fields, such as development and urban studies, will find this book an engaging introduction to the core issues of international development. International health practitioners, national and local policymakers, foundations officers, and other related professionals will also find it an invaluable compendium. "The Practice of International Health is a beautifully conceived and beautifully written book. It offers an inspiring example of what may be accomplished when scholars with field experience break free of rigid disciplinary boundaries in order to examine key problems in international health. This case-based approach is precisely the one that will allow us to build a new field based on broad understandings of these problems and on the solutions that might follow. The need for and vibrant potential of such a focus on practice that resonates in every page of this book signals its profound relevance to students and teachers of public health, and, one hopes, to policy makers and funders." From the Foreward by Paul Farmer

The fully revised new edition of the defining reference work in the field of medical anthropology A Companion to Medical Anthropology, Second Edition provides the most complete account of the key issues and debates in this dynamic, rapidly growing field. Bringing together contributions by leading international authorities in medical anthropology, this comprehensive reference work presents critical assessments and interpretations of a wide range of topical themes, including global and environmental health, political violence and war, poverty, malnutrition, substance abuse, reproductive health, and infectious diseases. Throughout the text, readers explore the global, historical, and political factors that continue to influence how health and illness are experienced and understood. The second edition is fully updated to reflect current controversies and significant new developments in the anthropology of health and related fields. More than twenty new and revised articles address research areas including war and health, illicit drug abuse, climate change and health, colonialism and modern biomedicine, activist-led research, syndemics, ethnomedicines, biocommunicability, COVID-19, and many others. Highlighting the impact medical anthropologists have on global health care policy and practice, A Companion to Medical Anthropology, Second Edition: Features specially commissioned articles by medical anthropologists working in communities worldwide Discusses future trends and emerging research areas in the field Describes biocultural approaches to health and illness and research design and methods in applied medical anthropology Addresses topics including chronic diseases, rising levels of inequality, war and health, migration and health, nutritional health, self-medication, and end of life care Part of the acclaimed Wiley Blackwell Companions to Anthropology series, A Companion to Medical Anthropology, Second Edition, remains an indispensable resource for medical anthropologists, as well as an excellent textbook for courses in medical anthropology, ethnomedicine, global health care, and medical policy.

Global Health in Africa is a first exploration of selected histories of global health initiatives in Africa. The collection addresses some of the most important interventions in disease control, including mass vaccination, large-scale treatment and/or prophylaxis campaigns, harm reduction efforts, and nutritional and virological research.The chapters in this collection are organized in three sections that evaluate linkages between past, present, and emergent. Part I, “Looking Back,” contains four chapters that analyze colonial-era interventions and reflect upon their implications for contemporary interventions. Part II, “The Past in the Present,” contains essays exploring the historical dimensions and unexamined assumptions of contemporary disease control programs. Part III, “The Past in the Future,” examines two fields of public health intervention in which efforts to reduce disease transmission and future harm are premised on an understanding of the past. This much-needed volume brings together international experts from the disciplines of demography, anthropology, and historical epidemiology. Covering health initiatives from smallpox vaccinations to malaria control to HIV campaigns, Global Health in Africa offers a first comprehensive look at some of global health’s most important challenges.