Major health care problems such as patient dissatisfaction, inequity of access to care, and spiraling costs no longer seem amenable to traditional biomedical solutions. Concepts derived from anthropologic and cross-cultural research may provide an alternative framework for identifying issues that require resolution. A limited set of such concepts is described as illustrated, including a fundame...

Geomorphosites or special geomorphologic sites are new concepts which have entered tourism literature with anemphasis on special sites. Basically, the goal for discussing such concepts is to identify landforms with specialimportance on understanding the geomorphologic structure of a region and their scientific, ecological, cultural,aesthetic, and economical values. Generally, they are used for ...

The concepts of interprofessional collaborative practice (IPCP), cultural competency and primary healthcare (PHC) appear to be linked in theory and practice. This discussion article provides arguments explicating the potential linkages between IPCP and cultural competency. We argue that cultural competency is an important component of IPCP both for relationships with patients and/or communities...

Venipuncture is perhaps the scariest aspect of hospitalization for children as it causes pain and high levels of behavioral distress. Pain is a complex experience which is also influenced by social factors such as cultural attitudes, beliefs and traditions. Studies focusing on ethnic/cultural differences in pain perception and behavioral distress show controversial results, in particular with r...

Idioms of distress communicate suffering via reference to shared ethnopsychologies, and better understanding of idioms of distress can contribute to effective clinical and public health communication. This systematic review is a qualitative synthesis of "thinking too much" idioms globally, to determine their applicability and variability across cultures. We searched eight databases and retained...

In this paper, innovative technologies for the presentation of complex cultural heritage sites with immersive 3D computer graphics are introduced, which are based on new concepts, partly having been adopted from other computer graphics areas to the specific needs for cultural heritage presentations, partly having been developed especially for this purpose. The main focus of this project was to ...

Ethnic elders are commonly reluctant to access mental health services and their mental health problems are often overlooked and detected late in the course of illness. Prior studies identified major barriers to ethnic seniors accessing appropriate mental health care demonstrating that language and cultural beliefs cannot be ignored if effective mental health services are to be provided to patie...