Cultural Diversity in Health and Illness

The eighth edition of this well-respected book continues to promote an awareness of the dimensions and complexities involved in caring for people from diverse cultural backgrounds. Completely revised and updated,CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN HEALTH AND ILLNESS examines the differences existing within North America by probing the health care system and consumers, and examples of traditional health/ HEALTH beliefs and practices among selected populations. An emphasis on the influences of recent social, political, and demographic changes helps to explore the issues and perceptions of health and illness today, while new introductory and capstone chapters help place material within perspective. An essential for any health-care professional, this book sets the standard for cultural perspectives and more importantlyHEALTH–the balance of the person, both within one’s being–physical, mental, and spiritual–and in the outside world–natural, communal, and metaphysical. (Terms, such asHEALTH, are written this way to emphasize holistic meaning.)

Dr. Rachel E. Spector has been a student of culturally diverse health and illness beliefs and practices for over 40 years and has researched and taught courses on culture and healthcare for the same time span. Dr. Spector has had the opportunity to work in many different communities, including the American Indian and Hispanic communities in Boston, Massachusetts. Her studies have taken her to many places: most of the United States, Canada, and Mexico; several European countries, including Denmark, England, Greece, Finland, Iceland, Italy, France, Russia, Spain, and Switzerland; Cuba; Israel; Pakistan; and Australia and New Zealand. She was fortunate enough to collect traditional amulets and remedies from many of these diverse communities, visit shrines, and meet practitioners of traditional healthcare in several places. She was instrumental in the creation and presentation of the exhibit “Immigrant Health Traditions” at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum, May 1994 through January 1995. She has exhibited health-related objects in several other settings. Recently, she served as a Colaboradora Honorifica (Honorary Collaborator) in the University of Alicante in Alicante, Spain, and Tamaulipas, Mexico. In 2006, she was a Lady Davis Fellow in the Henrietta Zold-Hadassah Hebrew University School of Nursing in Jerusalem, Israel. This text was translated into Spanish by Maria Munoz and published in Madrid by Prentice Hall as Las Culturas de la SALUD in 2003 and into Chinese in 2010. There have been two International Editions of the book. She is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing and a Scholar in the Transcultural Nursing Society. The American Nurses’ Association—Massachusetts, the state organization of the American Nurses’ Association, honored her as a “Living Legend” in 2007. In 2008, she received the Honorary Human Rights Award from the American Nurses Association. This award recognized her contributions and accomplishments that have been of national significance to human rights and have influenced healthcare and nursing practice.