ABSTRACT
Traditional health concepts are inadequate for furthering our understanding of life in black communities for a number of reasons. Most of those concepts have been derived from the medical model. That model is too linear in its focus; consequently, it fails to consider the rich, multilayered nature of life in those communities, which is influenced by many interacting factors. Use of the medical model limits the focus to individual factors in isolation of the environmental context, encouraging a blaming of the person. Stereotyping and blaming have led to an emphasis on pathology rather than strengths, (Weick, 1985) and may have encouraged a proliferation of culturally biased, negatively focused research on black communities.
