Community health screening programs for African-Americans and the medical anthropologist

Abstract

Community health screening programs were originally designed: to stimulate change in family and community knowledge and behavior relating to the prevention of disease; to inform the use of available health resources; and to improve the environmental, economic, and educational factors related to health. Since their inception, however, community health screening programs have primarily used conventional approaches to health improvement for the African-American community. That is, the need is not merely for the provision of more preventative and curative health services or the distribution of services to passive recipients, but for the active involvement of local populations in ways which will preserve or repattern their knowledge, attitudes and motivation concerning major health care issues. Health care professionals such as the clinicians need to expand their biopsychosocial model to include specific sociocultural data concerning African-American health care seeking pattern. Collaborative efforts of this type will therefore enable health care professionals to design future community health screening programs for the African-American community that are practical and culturally-oriented.