Knowledge, Beliefs and Practices About Health, Sickness and Medicine Among African Caribbean Migrants in London
Principal Investigator: Anna Waldstein
Project dates: 2005-2006 (preliminary dates)
Funding: University of Kent, Faculty of Social Science
Partners: The Nubian Life Resource Centre, London
This project addresses the key social scientific question of how cultural practices are modified, lost and/or maintained as migrants adapt to host societies. Specifically, it aims to determine whether traditional medical knowledge from the Caribbean has influenced the adjustment of African Caribbean migrants to life in the United Kingdom and to assess the extent to which medical beliefs and practices have been transformed in the migration process. The research will also contribute to the social science literature on medical pluralism and should be of interest to health policy planners.
Funding from the University of Kent, Faculty of Social Sciences supported networking in London’s Caribbean community and the collection of preliminary data on Caribbean elders’ definitions of health, sickness, disease and medicine at the Nubian Life Resource Centre. This preliminary research was done in preparation for an ESRC First Grants proposal, which is currently under review.
The specific objectives of the full project are to:
- Evaluate the role of ethnomedical knowledge in migrant adaptation to British society by comparing the health status of elderly African Caribbean migrants with varying levels of involvement with traditional Caribbean medicine and assessing the efficacy of Caribbean medical practices according to both ethnomedical and biomedical criteria.
- Investigate how elderly African Caribbean migrants’ knowledge of health, sickness and medicine is constructed, how it is shaped by multiple medical systems and cultural traditions and how it informs ethnomedical practices.
- Examine multi-generational social networks among African Caribbean migrants and their descendents to determine if/how Caribbean ethnomedical knowledge is transmitted through them.
- Create a searchable video archive that documents how elderly African Caribbean migrants define, understand and maintain health; explain the causes, signs, symptoms and effects of common health problems; and manage health problems using self-treatment (with herbal remedies and pharmaceuticals) as well as professional medical care.