Preventing and Controlling Cancer in North America

This multidisciplinary analysis links epidemiologic, cultural, social, and medical analyses of cancer prevention, detection, and care. The contributors demonstrate that different ethnic groups and cultures have distinct concepts of cancer prevention and control. These ideas are dynamic, shaped by personal and group histories, social networks, technologies, politics, economics, religions, linguistics, and other environmental conditions.

Cross-cultural writings about cancer make this book useful to professionals and students in the disciplines of medicine, nursing, public health, sociology, anthropology, and social welfare. The 15 articles reveal that cancer knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors are diverse cross-cultural constructs resulting from distinct experiences. Ideas and behaviors about prevention and control may be shared or individual and idiosyncratic. The book is composed of three sections: I. Cancer Beliefs and Behaviors; II. Interventions in Review; III. New Strategies for Cancer Research. The authors, including anthropologists, epidemiologists, health educators, nurses, and physicians, explicate notions of prevention and control, and assess interventions and methodologies that illustrate generally ignored successes in decreased mortality and morbidity among members of specific populations.

DIANE WEINER is a cultural anthropologist researching the relationship of chronic illness and cancer in American Indian populations./e She is a staff research associate at the American Indian Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.