Culture, Health and Illness - Fifth Edition

by Cecil G. Helman

See District Online Schedule for official list of required and optional textbooks and materials for this class.
Purchase Textbooks Online at the SDCCD Online Bookstore

Hardware and Software:
To successfully complete this online course, you will be required to meet the minimum hardware and software requirements. View Hardware and Software Requirements.

Internet Browser:
You must use a supported Internet browser in order to successfully work in Blackboard Vista, the online course management system for this course. To see a list of supported Internet browsers, click here.

This course presents the cultural forces, among other social motivations, that are powerful influences on health and wellness-related behavior. Medical anthropology is a combined sub-branch of biological and cultural anthropology and is concerned with the application of anthropological and behavioral science theories and methods to address questions about health, illness and healing. This course is designed for students interested in culture, biology, and health.

• Define the subfield of medical anthropology within the context of the scientific discipline of Anthropology.
• Examine theoretical questions of how different cultures frame “illness,” “health,” “healing,” or “medicine” as an object of anthropological understanding.
• Explore integrative approaches from different sciences used by medical anthropologists to assess the nature of health and disease.
• Identify current methodologies used by medical anthropologists to study disease etiology, the experience of suffering, and the provision of health services.
• Discuss how certain health disparities come to be identified with particular stigmatized social groups, or by sex and gender.
• Evaluate the relationship between food production, diet, socio-economics and health.
• Examine factors such as personality and cultural background for their influence to enhance or reduce effects in relation to placebos, psychotropic drugs, alcohol and tobacco.
• Explore how the relationship of stress, anxiety, and adaptation are modified by the culture in which they occur.
• Examine the general changes in health subsystems (epidemiology, demography, and nutrition) resulting from stages of external cultural contact and acculturation.
• Distinguish the difference in meaning for health programming described as (1) cultural competent; (2) cultural sensitive; (3) cultural responsive; or (4) culturally-based.
• Evaluate how cultural and social factors inform the design, delivery, and evaluation of clinical encounters, preventive services and international health programs.
• Examine the field of current bioethics and review the past influences of colonial and postcolonial history with regard to the introduction and dominance of biomedical research and intervention.
• Differentiate how international health programs can be made culturally and socially relevant to the communities at which they are aimed.

REGISTRATION DIRECTIONS:

1. Complete Online Application (for new SDCCD students). Go to Student Web Services
2. Receive registration appointment and instructions by email or mail.
3. Register online at the Reg-e, our online registration system.
4. Make sure that you pay your tuition so that you don't lose your registration!   Fees and Tuition Information.
5. Order textbooks online. Visit our online bookstore.
6. After completion of registration on Reg-e, and several days prior to the start of the semester, you will receive an email with course login instructions. If you don't receive an email please go to http://www.sdccdonline.net and login on the first day of class as follows:
   
   Type your Blackboard Vista Username = 7-digit College Student Identification (CSID) number
   Type your Password =  mmddyyyy (your birthdate with no hyphens, slashes, or spaces)
   
   For example:  1010101 (CSID number used at registration)
                          06231980 (password for the birthdate June 23, 1980 )
    
7. If this course is closed, please login to Reg-e to be placed on a waitlist. If the waitlist is full, you will not be able to add your name to the waitlist.

You will not be able to login to your online course until the first day of the semester!!!
You must login to your online course on the first day of the session to avoid your enrollment being dropped.
Follow the login instructions at www.sdccdonline.net/login.htm

View the following website for information about the wait list for this course:

http://www.sdccdonline.net/registration.htm