Explaining Illness to African Americans: Employing Cultural Concerns with Strategies

This quotation cogently illustrates the central theme of this chapter; indeed, of this book: Culture is a key variable in the health care arena and specifically in the explanation and understanding of illness. As used here, culture refers to the world views, values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that one acquires as a member of a given social group (Brown, 1963; Harwood, 1981). Culture has also been defined expansively to include “a broad range of social factors that lead people to think and act in very unique ways” (Kreps & Kunimoto, 1994, p. 2).