ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses hypertension control in New Orleans as a problem-in anthropology and primary health care, where difficulties in the management of hypertension in a largely Black population are related to folk illness models and health beliefs. It argues that many of the problems of primary health care delivery in the United States are similar to those in developing nations and that anthropology can make a significant contribution to primary health care in developed nations as well. The chapter demonstrates that the contributions of the anthropologist as ethnographer. It examines the problem of hypertension control in a New Orleans clinic as a case study of a disjunction between professional and popular health concepts. The chapter presents an anthropological analysis of a primary health care problem in a First World situation focusing on the interaction between culture and delivery of basic health care in a US community.
