ANT 2010 - Culture and Health in Central America

• Explain how various systems of exploitation such as the encomienda and hacienda have established an extractive economy in Central America that persists to the present day
• Explain how inequality in the region was exacerbated by the colonialist and neo-liberalist interventions of powerful Western countries such as the United States
• Explain how popular Catholicism establishes many of the foundational beliefs concerning the causes of disease in Central America as well as how these beliefs and ethnobotany shape the cultural knowledge concerning the cure and prevention of disease
• Explain how neo-liberalism and globalization have exacerbated existing systems of exploitation in Central America and how these deepen economic inequality in the region
• Explain how health and healthcare in Central America are part of larger patterns found globally in least developed countries (LDCs) by focusing on phenomenon such as oral health, water-borne diseases, and pregnancy and childbirth
• Develop a cultural health assessment from someone of another culture using the Giger-Davidhizer Transcultural Assessment Model to explain that culture’s beliefs concerning nutrition, pregnancy and childbirth, death and death rituals, spirituality, and healthcare practices
• Write a paper that examines the impact of cultural beliefs concerning the causes of disease and the curing of disease in Central America on the practices of health and health care

• None

• The concepts of culture and cultural anthropology
• The geography of Central America
• The people of Latin America
• Introducing Latin America
• Central American history: conquest and colonialism
• Banana Wars to Cold War: twentieth-century interventions in Central America
• The cultural politics of race and ethnicity in Central America
• Religion and everyday life in Central America
• Health and coping with illness: cultural beliefs concerning health and disease
• Health and coping with illness: cultural beliefs concerning healing
• Perspectives on globalization
• Introduction to global health care and public health
• Working with global populations: cultural competencies
• Global health systems and delivery of care
• Maternal, newborn, and pediatric health
• Population health: oral care
• Population health: nutrition, malnutrition, and diarrhea
• Population health: communicable and infectious illness
• Population health: respiratory illnesses