Learning Resource Center (LRC): DEI Information Resources

Folk practices shape the concepts about healing that are diffused throughout African American communities. Stephanie Y. Mitchem shows that these practices are not simply about healing; they are linked to expressions of faith, delineating aspects of a holistic epistemology and pointing to disjunctures between African American views of wellness and illness and those of the culture of institutional medicine.

African Americans today continue to suffer disproportionately from heart disease, diabetes, and other health problems. In Caring for Equality David McBride chronicles the struggle by African Americans and their white allies to improve poor black health conditions as well as inadequate medical care--caused by slavery, racism, and discrimination--since the arrival of African slaves in America. Black American health progress resulted from the steady influence of what David McBride calls the health equality ideal: the principle that health of black Americans could and should be equal to that of whites and other Americans.

Novel in its approach and unique in its scope, Black Mental Health: Patients, Providers, and Systems examines the role of African Americans within American psychiatric health care from distinct but interconnected perspectives. The experiences of both black patients and the black mental health professionals who serve them are analyzed against the backdrop of the cultural, societal, and professional forces that have shaped their place in this specialized health care arena.

With a focus on how to improve the effectiveness and cultural competence of clinical services and research, this authoritative volume synthesizes current knowledge on both the physical and psychological health of African Americans today. Historical, sociocultural, and economic factors that affect the quality and utilization of health care services in African American communities are examined in depth. Evidence-based ways to draw on individual, family, and community strengths in prevention and treatment are highlighted throughout.

This ground-breaking textbook examines Asian American health from a public health perspective. It provides an overview of the social, political, economic, and cultural forces that influence the distribution of disease and illness in Asian American communities. The book explores the diversity within the Asian community with respect to health seeking behavior and knowledge, socioeconomic status, educational level, cultural traditions, and specific health care needs and issues. By examining the contextual factors that impact health, the book seeks to facilitate a meaningful dialogue and identify creative solutions for health disparities faced by racial and ethnic minority communities.

An innovative, deeply researched history of Chinese medicine in America and the surprising interplay between Eastern and Western medical practice. Chinese medicine has a long history in the United States, with written records dating back to the American colonial period. In this intricately crafted history, Tamara Venit Shelton chronicles the dynamic systems of knowledge, therapies, and materia medica crossing between China and the United States from the eighteenth century to the present.

The practice of curanderismo, or Mexican American folk medicine, is part of a historically and culturally important health care system deeply rooted in native Mexican healing techniques. This is the first book to describe the practice from an insider's point of view, based on the authors' three-year apprenticeships with curanderos (healers). Robert T. Trotter and Juan Antonio Chavira present an intimate view of not only how curanderismo is practiced but also how it is learned and passed on as a healing tradition.

Contemporary Los Angeles can increasingly be considered a part of Latin America. Only 200 miles from the border with Mexico, it has the largest, most diverse population of Latinos in the United States--and reportedly the second largest population of Mexicans outside of Mexico City. Despite the expansion of Latino cuisine's popularity in Los Angeles and the celebrity of many Latino chefs, there is a stark divide between what is available at restaurants and food trucks and what is available to many low-income, urban Latinos who live in food deserts. In these areas, access to healthy, affordable, culturally appropriate foods is a daily challenge. Food-related diseases, particularly diabetes and obesity, plague these communities. In the face of this crisis, grassroots organizations, policy-makers and local residents are working to improve access and affordability through a growing embrace of traditional cuisine, an emergent interest in the farm-to-table movement, and the work of local organizations.

In a major contribution to the study of diabetes, this book is the first to analyze the disease through a syndemic framework. An innovative, mixed-methods study, Emily Mendenhall shows how adverse social conditions, such as poverty and oppressive relationships, disproportionately stress certain populations and expose them to disease clusters. She goes beyond epidemiological research that has linked diabetes and depression, revealing how broad structural inequalities play out in the life histories of individuals, families and communities and lead to higher rates of mortality and morbidity.

Stephen Kunitz's work raises crucial issues for public policy in the medical field, and will be valuable for social scientists, physicians, and health professionals concerned with the social context of public health and other medical facilities.

In Reproductive Justice, sociologist Barbara Gurr provides the first analysis of Native American women's reproductive healthcare and offers a sustained consideration of the movement for reproductive justice in the United States. The book examines the reproductive healthcare experiences on Pine Ridge Reservation, home of the Oglala Lakota Nation in South Dakota--where Gurr herself lived for more than a year.

Filling a significant gap in the cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary literature within the field of Pasifika (Polynesian) and Maori identities and mental health, this volume focuses on bridging mental health related research and practice within the indigenous communities of the South Pacific. Much of the content reflects both differences from and relationships with the dominant Western theories and practices so often unsuccessfully applied with these groups. The contributors represent both experienced researchers and practitioners and address topics such as research examining traditional and emerging Pasifika identities; contemporary research and practice in working with Pasifika youth and adolescents; culturally-appropriate approaches for working with Pasifika adults; and practices in supervision that have been developed by Maori and Pasifika practitioners.