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People's Health (people + health)
Selected Abstracts,Land Moves and Behaves': Indigenous Discourse on Sustainable Land Management in Pichataro, Patzcuaro Basin, MexicoGEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES A: PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY, Issue 3-4 2003Narciso Barrera-Bassols ABSTRACT An ethnoecological study was carried out in the Purhepecha community of San Francisco Pichataro, west central Mexico, with the purpose of investigating how land degradation, in terms of soil erosion and fertility depletion, was (and still is) handled by indigenous farmers so that traditional agriculture could remain sustainable over centuries. After briefly reviewing opposite views on the land degradation issue in the regional context of the Patzcuaro lake basin, the paper focuses on land management at local level. The indigenous concept of land is discussed as an integrated whole, including water cycle, climate, relief and soils. Indigenous people venerate land as the mother of all living beings, including humans. Therefore, people's health and survival require good land care and management. Local knowledge on land management is organized around four basic principles: land position, land behaviour, land resilience and land quality. Fanners recognize land as a dynamic subject, a concept reflected in the expression ,land moves and behaves'. Soil erosion and fertility depletion are perceived as ,normal' processes the farmers control by means of integrated management practices. Farmers recognize several land classes, primarily controlled by landscape position, which require different land care. The example of San Francisco Pichataro demonstrates that traditional agriculture does not necessarily lead to land degradation. But the collective knowledge, or social theory, on land management is increasingly exposed to be fragmented as the community undergoes structural changes and loses its social cohesion under the pressure of externalities such as off-farm activities, out-migrations and governmental intervention, among others. [source] Burden of stroke in Maori and Pacific peoples of New ZealandINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF STROKE, Issue 3 2007Valery L. Feigin Studying ethnic particularities of stroke epidemiology may not only provide a clue to the causes of the observed racial/ethnic differences in stroke mortality but is also important for appropriate, culturally specific health care planning, prevention in stroke and improved health outcomes. This overview of published population-based stroke incidence studies and other relevant research in the multi-ethnic New Zealand population demonstrates an obvious ethnic disparity in stroke in New Zealand, with the greatest and increasing burden of stroke being imposed on Maori, who are indigenous, and Pacific people, who have migrated and settled in this country. These data warrant urgent and effective measures to be undertaken by health policy makers and health care providers to reverse the unfavourable trends in stroke and improve Maori and Pacific people's health. [source] Communication and Uncertainty ManagementJOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION, Issue 3 2001Dale E. Brashers The fundamental challenge for refining theories of communication and uncertainty is to abandon the assumption that uncertainty will produce anxiety. To better explain processes of communication and uncertainty management, we must answer questions about (a) the experience and meaning of uncertainty, (b) the role of appraisal and emotion in uncertainty management, and (c) the range of behavioral and psychological responses to uncertainty. This paper outlines and extends a theory of uncertainty management and reviews current theory and research in this area. In addition to the theoretical advances promised by this perspective, the paper describes applications to health communication practice. The drive in disease prevention to reduce uncertainty about the state of health and illness has led to a "culture of chronic illness." Constant surveillance of people's health, combined with improved methods for screening and monitoring, virtually guarantee finding something wrong with every person, creating a society divided into the chronically ill and the worried well (i.e., those waiting to be diagnosed). [source] Managing home nursing care: visibility, accountability and exclusionNURSING INQUIRY, Issue 3 2001Article first published online: 30 JUL 200, Mary Ellen Purkis Managing home nursing care: visibility, accountability and exclusion The paper examines managerial practices shaping contemporary home nursing care. Foucault's writings on governmentality are used to appraise managerial and nursing practices understood as exemplars of forms of government of people's health. An ethnographic study of organizational practices shaping contemporary home nursing care reveals that the everyday work of managers involves making particular forms of nursing practice visible. Through careful scripting of these visible forms of practice, managers and nurses together work to exclude the local knowledge of patients and of nurses regarding experiences of living with chronic illness. Recommendations are offered for managers and nurses who seek to develop more autonomous roles for nurses: roles that require the inclusion of people's own knowledge of how they live at home with their chronic illness. [source] Beyond polarities of knowledge: the pragmatics of faithNURSING PHILOSOPHY, Issue 1 2002Gweneth A. Hartrick RN Abstract The dissociation between the domains of knowledge continues to perpetuate the fragmentation of people's health and healing experiences. Of particular significance are the polarities that have been created between the objective, subjective and spiritual dimensions of knowledge and human experience. This paper offers a consideration of how faith might serve as a pragmatic avenue towards assuaging the polarities between knowledges and enhancing nurses' ability to attend to the complex and mulitdimensional nature of health and healing processes. [source] | |||||||||||||