IV. Culture and Race In the Epidemiology of Disease, continued

The term cultural epidemiology refers to a culture’s effect on the incidence and prevalence of diseases and disorders within an ethnic or cultural group. It additionally refers to the way a culture affects the onset, symptom recognition, course, and outcome of disease processes among members of the group. For example, a cultural group’s acceptance or rejection of condom use or circumcision will affect the incidence of HIV within the group.

A culturally shaped explanatory model for respiratory problems or infant diarrhea will affect the timing of health care seeking and receptiveness to various treatment modalities. Another example, as it relates to mental health, is that the symptoms of depression vary across cultures. Group members’ responses to persons who experience depression and other forms of mental illness are culturally influenced.

It would be impossible for health and mental health professionals to understand the workings of culture on the health and well-being of all people in all cultures.¹ Rather, cultural awareness involves the recognition that people of different cultures understand and respond to health and mental health issues quite differently, and that these differences do in fact cause variation in the epidemiology of disease.

The education of culturally aware health and mental health professionals should include instruction about these processes in a variety of cultures and should teach methods for learning how to identify unique cultural factors that positively and negatively affect the health and well-being of specific cultural groups.

¹The term health and mental health professionals includes, but is not limited to: provider of health or mental health services, health or mental health educators, policy makers, researchers, faculty, and administrators.