"This book provides students of public health with tools and perspectives for understanding the relationship between culture and health. Effective promotion programs cannot be realized without attention to the cultural context. As part of the Essentials Public Health series, this critical text introduces the concept of culture as a framework for understanding human behavior and health."--Back cover.

With diversity, including cultural diversity, increasingly become the norm, it has become even more essential for students and those planning to work in public health to have more than a cursory understanding of the important cultural dimension of the human societies and groups with whom they'll be partners. Essentials of Health, Culture, and Diversity: Understanding People, Reducing Disparities examines what is meant by culture and the ways which culture intersects with health issues, and explores how public health efforts can benefit by understanding and working with cultural processes. Using a range of conceptual tools and research methods, this text provides an overview of specific domains where culture and health intersect, including: varying definitions of health/well-being; understandings of health risk; illness causation and treatment theories (ethnomedical systems); healing/curing traditions; the relationship between health risk (vulnerability) and more.

Major changes are occurring in the United States population and the nation's health care institutions and delivery systems. Significant disparities in health status exist across population groups. But the health care enterprise, with all its integrated and disparate parts, has been slow to respond. Written by three nationally known scholars and experts, Diversity and Cultural Competence in Health Care: A Systems Approach is designed to provide health care students and professionals with a clear understanding of foundations, philosophies, and processes that strengthen diversity management, inclusion, and culturally competent care delivery. Focusing on current practice and health care policy, including the recently passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA), this textbook integrates strategic diversity management, self-reflective leadership, and the personal change process with culturally and linguistically appropriate care into a cohesive systems-oriented approach for health care professionals. The essentials of cultural competence and diversity management covered in this text will be helpful to a wide variety of students because they encompass principles and practices that can be realistically incorporated into the ongoing work of any health care field or organization. Each chapter contains learning objectives, summary, key terms, and review questions and activities designed to allow students to understand and explore concepts and practices identified throughout the text.

Essentials of Health Behavior: Social and Behavioral Theory in Public Health, Third Edition provides the groundwork for understanding, assessing, and effectively applying theories of human behavior within the practice of public health. In clear and accessible language, this text provides the student with a background of the kinds of social and behavioral theories that guide our understanding of health related behavior and form the background for health promotion and prevention efforts. Filled with real life examples and profiles, the text explores some of the ways in which these theories and approaches are used in applied health promotion efforts.

Written for all health care providers, this text promotes awareness of the dimensions and complexities involved in caring for people from culturally diverse backgrounds. The author through discussions of her own experiences, shows how cultural heritage can affect delivery and acceptance of health care and how professionals, when interacting with their clients, need to be aware of these issues in order to deliver safe and professional care. Traditional and alternative health care beliefs and practices from Asian American, African American, Hispanic, and American Indian perspectives are represented.

Essentials of Teaching Adapted Physical Education: Diversity, Culture, and Inclusion offers a wealth of knowledge for teaching today's diverse student population, including those with disabilities. Readers will learn how to teach a variety of students, organize learning within various curricular models, assess and evaluate students, and manage behavior. Readers will also learn more about the conditions and disabilities they may encounter when teaching, how to understand students' various abilities, and how to adapt and modify instructional methods to include all students. The book emphasizes the importance of being culturally responsive and acquiring the necessary knowledge to infuse appropriate, socially just practices into educational settings. Future teachers will learn how to apply culturally responsive instructional methods and behavior management strategies and will understand broader social and economic contexts for their students' behavior. At the same time, this book provides more than a how-to approach to teaching adapted physical education. Its content and features promote reflective learning, encouraging readers to anticipate the types of teaching situations and challenges that may arise and think through how they will respond. Scenarios and vignettes throughout provide context for the material and promote critical thinking and problem solving.

"This book will examine what is meant by culture, the ways in which culture intersects with health issues, how public health efforts can benefit by understanding and working with cultural processes, and a brief selection of conceptual tools and research methods that are useful in identifying relationships between culture and health. The book will also include practical guidelines for incorporating cultural understanding in public health settings, and examples of programs where that has occurred"--