Addressing Cultural Contexts of Health and Wellbeing in Global Health

CHAIR: PAZ LEMUS, L. Tatiana (Vanderbilt U)

PAZ LEMUS, L. Tatiana (Vanderbilt U) Rethinking Childhoods and Childhood Obesity Through a Cultural Contexts of Health Approach

CUJ, Miguel (Vanderbilt U) Feasting on Knowledge: Exploring Guatemala’s Maya Food Groups in a Global Approach

KOSS, Sophia (Vanderbilt U) The Cultural Context of Heat: Addressing Heat in the U.S.

DISCUSSANT: HARVEY, T.S. (Vanderbilt U)

 

This session explores how many obstacles to health and wellbeing are grounded in colonial-legacy frameworks that privilege specialized scientific inquiry and give ‘individual autonomy’ and ‘personal responsibility’ outsized roles in their contribution to health outcomes and life chances. These papers will discuss the application of a Cultural Contexts of Health (CCH) approach to issues such as conceptions of childhood, pain, heat, and nutritional science. Building more just and equitable health futures requires addressing how unresolved colonial legacies in Guatemala, the US, and across the globe impact health and wellbeing.

 

PAZ LEMUS, L. Tatiana (Vanderbilt U) Rethinking Childhoods and Childhood Obesity Through a Cultural Contexts of Health Approach. This paper explores the application of the Cultural Contexts of Health approach to the conceptions of Childhoods and Childhood Obesity in Global Health. Based on the WHO’s Behavioral and Cultural Insights Unit model, the Vanderbilt Cultural Contexts of Health and Wellbeing initiative aims to show how accounting for cultural contexts and lived experiences can help identify upstream sources of health inequalities. In this paper, I aim to map out the colonial legacies in producing scientific knowledge about childhoods and childhood obesity, and the challenges of including medical humanities and children’s epistemologies in public health policy.

CUJ, Miguel (Vanderbilt U) Feasting on Knowledge: Exploring Guatemala’s Maya Food Groups in a Global Approach. This paper explores how the K’iche’ Maya people in Guatemala interact with the country’s food guidelines, regional food policies of classification, and nutritional global classification of food. The nutritional global and regional classification of food also influences recent food patterns of ultra-processed products in Guatemalan Indigenous communities. This biomedical approach dismisses Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies of food which classifies food according to relational taste and context. By analyzing contextual data, observing, and speaking with K’iche’ Maya ixoq’ib’ (women) in their food preparation and consumption practices, this paper highlights the cultural values of appropriate food that go unrecognized in food guidelines designed by global health experts.

 

KOSS, Sophia (Vanderbilt U) The Cultural Context of Heat: Addressing Heat in the U.S. As current heat waves affect different regions of the US, it is necessary to address how these impacts of heat are mostly human-created. As our bodies react to create environments and conditions that make us more vulnerable, exposure to heat can increase disparate health and wellbeing outcomes. This paper explores different angles where a cultural contexts of health approach can provide insights for heat and health policy in the US. By looking at global and local examples, I hope to highlight the potential importance of a cultural context approach to heat and health

Speakers

• L. Tatiana Paz Lemus, Vanderbilt Cultural Contexts of Health Initiative, Program & Research Manager
• Miguel Cuj, Student
• Sophia Koss, Vanderbilt University
• T.S. Harvey, Vanderbilt University, Associate Professor of Medical and Linguistic Anthropology