How will I apply public Health anthropology in my practice?

Public health is often described as having the population or community as its patient, in contrast to the individual-level focus of clinical medicine. The more focus on the community creates a natural foundation for team building between public health and anthropology. This becomes the primary focus on the study of people in groups, and especially in local communities. WHO(1948) defines Public health as the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals. Wolf (1994) defines anthropology as the study of humankind, past and present.

To understand the full scope and complexity of cultures across all of human history, anthropology draws and builds upon knowledge from the social and biological sciences as well as the humanities and physical sciences (AAA, 2014). Anthropology and public health have similarities because both aims at understanding human behavior and interactions, to prevent disease and prolong life by integrating physical or biological, cultures and different languages of people. It is very important to link the two because health threats related to the population or communities are curbed through proficient planning and teamed decision making. Anthropologists also assist public health practitioners in application of knowledge to give solutions to human problems. They also often integrate the perceptive of several of these areas into their research, teaching and professional lives.

Public health field has been supported by Anthropology studies in important methodological contributions, especially with regard to the use of Ethnography in the systematic collection o...

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...logy in our day today activities. Once these concepts are heard, it will be easier to be able to manage employees at the workplace regardless of differences in language, tribe, race, and background. Ethnographic methods such as participant-observation in public health decision-making workshops and semi-structured interviews with community leaders, clients, polluters, NGOs, Law breakers, Private partners and in schools to try to recreate the key socio-geographical relationships that have had the most impact on the environment , public health and the municipality’s organizational functions.

Works Cited

Kathleen M. Macqueen, The Gale Inc., Macmillan Reference USA, New York, 2002.

@ 2014. American Anthropological Association. 2300 Clarendon Blvd., Suite 1301.Arlington, Va.22201

Wolf, Eric 1994 Perilous Ideas: Race, Culture, People. Current Anthropology 35: p 227