Multicultural Perspectives on Health and Wellbeing/Ethnicity and chronic diseases



Culture represents shared beliefs, values and understandings. Culture also provides a basis for understandings of health, illness and lifestyle to its members’. Australia as we know it today, is a migrant society with close to 30% of Australia’s population born overseas. Australia also faces a significant burden from chronic diseases. Some ethnically diverse groups face higher rates of certain chronic diseases when compared to the host Anglo-Australian population. It is thus essential to consider why might this be the case and what may the best strategies be to tackle these issues. Should we take a “one-size fits all” approach or should services be tailored to specific cultural needs? These are some of the aspects that will be examined in this lecture.

Lecture
Ethnicity, Culture and Chronic disease

Activity

 * 1) Review of lecture, "Ethnicity, culture and chronic disease"
 * 2) Discussion on Healthy Immigrant Effect and Risk factors to diseases
 * 3) Online quiz changes
 * 4) Discuss submission of presentation
 * 5) Readings
 * 6) Group work

Readings

 * 1) Bhopal, R. (2004). Glossary of terms relating to ethnicity and race: for reflection and debate. J Epidemiol Community Health 2004;58:441-445
 * 2) Gupta, S., Aroni, R., Lockwood, S., Jayasuriya, I., and Teede, H. (2015). South Asians and Anglo Australians with heart disease in Australia. Aust. Health Review, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/AH14254
 * 3) Bhopal, R. and Donaldson, L. (1998) White, European, Western, Caucasian, or what? Inappropriate labeling in research on race, ethnicity, and health. American Journal of Public Health 88(9): 1303–1307.
 * 4) Fine, L. Phiogene, G.S., Gramling, R., Coups, E. and Sinha, S. (2004) Prevalence of multiple chronic disease risk factors: 2001 National Health Interview Survey. American Journal of Preventive Medicine 27 (2):18–24
 * 5) Kennedy, S., McDonald,J.T. and Biddle, N (2006) The healthy immigrant effect and immigrant selection: evidence from four countries. SEDAP Research Program, 67. http://www.carleton.ca/sppa/wp-content/uploads/chesg-mcdonald.pdf
 * Liu, J., Davidson, E., Bhopal, R., White, M., Johnson, M., Netto, G., Deverill, M. and Sheikh, A. (2012) Adapting health promotion interventions to meet the needs of ethnic minority groups: mixed-methods evidence synthesis. Health Technol Assess 16 (44): 1-469

Videos
Ethnicity and health - a video play list compiled by Sabrina Gupta

Websites

 * 1) National Health Priority Areas: http://www.aihw.gov.au/national-health-priority-areas/
 * 2) Australian Bureau of Statistics: http://www.abs.gov.au