Ethics for the Pediatrician: Providing Culturally Effective Health Care

There is no strong consensus on what is meant by the concept of “culture.” Anthropologists and behavioral scientists note that it is “an abstraction … , a generalization extrapolated from the specific material products, interactions, or ideations. … We do not, in fact, observe culture; we observe phenomena that we choose to group together and label culture.” (1) As applied to the health-care setting, “Culture defines how health care information is received, how rights and protections are exercised, what is considered to be a health problem, how symptoms and concerns about the problem are expressed, who should provide treatment for the problem, and what type of treatment should be given.” (2) (3) In short, culture is the lens through which one views the world, affecting everything that an individual perceives and does, often at an unconscious level. Although common use often treats the term...