Heritage Assessment - Essay Example

Heritage assessment I am a Christian from India living in the US for the last 10 years. Assessing myself using the heritage assessment tool, I got ascore of 29. My score suggests that I have a considerable identification with my traditional heritage. Being a person who has migrated from one’s own native country and culture to a new nation and culture, I have always felt I am the odd person out in the new culture. It has been very difficult for me to realize what my real needs are as a socio-cultural being.

I have understood that I retain many elements of my native culture and also I look forward to assimilating the new culture as well. But many a time, I find that they are mutually exclusive and contradictory. It is in this context of ambivalence that this heritage assessment tool can be a helpful tool in deciding one’s possibilities and limitations in blending both cultures and living a content life. In the questionnaire given for making the heritage assessment, the questions are focused at finding out whether one is totally under the influence of one’s traditions and whether one feels at home only in one’s own tradition.

For example, the set of questions about maintaining constant contact with one’s close and not so close relatives point to a social circle that each human being cultivates around him or her. When this close circle is full of members belonging to the same traditional heritage, the individual’s dependence on one’s own heritage is reinforced. And for such a person, it would be difficult to mix with the ways of other traditions and cultures. Similarly, the question on the choice of friends is an important one in the sense that it conveys not just information about the traditional heritage of the person’s friends but also shows up a mirror towards the attitudes and life philosophy of the person concerned.

Such information becomes very valuable when a crucial decision involving culture has to be made. For example, a person who scores a high in this assessment like me, possibly might not go for marrying a person outside one’s tradition and culture because that relationship might not meet the cultural demands and needs of the person involved. This tool also comes handy when one has to rectify one’s own cultural biases and the inherent flaws in socializing. As American society, like all other communities of the developed world, has been found home to ethnic disparities in health care, this assessment will help redefine the care paradigm by assimilating the values of diversity (LaVeist, 2011).

Interviews I have interviewed three families, one my own, the second one a Japanese family and the third a White American family. In my family, I have found out that health maintenance gets attended to only when a person reaches his/her middle age. The awareness about the need of exercise and the individual responsibility in keeping oneself healthy is very low. Health protection is a matter of concern inside my family only when somebody falls ill. It is the common practice to try home remedies for milder illnesses and to approach doctors and hospitals only when the illness is serious.

Once the illness is cured, for health restoration, we return to traditional herbal medicines and a healthy diet. The Japanese family that I interviewed was found to practice ritualistic healing. For them, the concept of health is inevitably linked with the notion of religiosity. Burning incenses, lighting lamps and drinking herbal potions are the health protection measures that they practice when somebody falls ill. Among them also, the awareness about the significance of exercise is very low.

Visits to doctors and hospitalizations happen very rarely for the members of this Japanese family. They also practice prayer as a way for health restoration. The whole community participates in such healing prayer meetings. While my family had individual and collective health insurance coverage, the Japanese family did not have any. The White American family that I interviewed presented a contrast to the other two families interviewed. They have proper health insurance, all the members of the family practice regular yoga, morning walk and exercise for maintaining health, and they prefer treatment in hospital to home care.

The community or even other family members do not get involved when one person is hospitalized. Health is an individual and private matter, totally so. For health restoration, this White family practices all the prescribed methods of modern medicine. Food supplements and vitamin and mineral replenishments are taken care of during illness as well as during healthy periods Common health traditions based in my cultural heritage. The common health traditions based in my cultural heritage include, a health-concept centered on illness, considerable involvement of family and community in individual health concerns, belief in the spiritual and ritual aspects of healing and the practice of alternative medicinal systems like Ayurveda and Homeo medicines.

And as has been found in social science research on ethnicity and health, the decision to go to a hospital and get admitted is most often made not by the individual who is ll but by the close relatives and family members (Zhan, 2003, p.8). How the families ascribe to these traditions and practices. The families often have an unwritten set of health norms that conform to these traditions and practices. For example, the belief that leaves of Neem tree can heal the severity of chicken pox borders on truth and superstition.

There are many religious connotations attributed to it, especially among the Hindus of India. But still, even a Christian family like mine, often will make a person afflicted with this disease lie down on Neem leaves. Similarly, it is almost a ritual to visit a relative in hospital and also bring him/her food. The “cultural phenomena” that influence the health choices of individuals can include choice of certain kind of food, avoidance of certain food items, reluctance to take certain medicines, parents’ health traditions, and the way in which any language depicts each illnesses (Heath, 1995, p.165). Hence, it can be said that as the heritage assessment tool pointed out, health, like friendship and love, is a cultural construct as well.

References Heath, H.B.M. (1995) Potter and Perry's foundations in nursing theory and practice, Philadelphia: Elsevier Health Sciences. LaVeist, T.A. (2011) Minority populations and health: An Introduction to Health Disparities in the United States, London: John Wley and Sons. Zan, L. (2003) Asian Americans: vulnerable populations, model interventions, and clarifying agendas, Burlington: Johns and Bartlett Learning.