Ethics and Culture

Synonyms

Culture: customs; Lifestyle; Civilization

Definition

Culture is a system of shared beliefs, values, behaviors and practices common to a particular group or population that results from group experience interpreted in light of beliefs about the purpose and meaning of life. With regard to health and well being, culture includes:

• ideas about definitions and causes of health and illness;

• beliefs about how to protect and improve health; attitudes about when, how, and from whom to seek help;

• appropriate ways of expressing (or not expressing) symptoms or suffering.

Public health ethics include the principles (ethical principles) and values (ethical values) that help guide interventions within a specific population which has its own culture and ethics. The encounter between public health ethics and culture, often, generates some conflicts.

Basic Characteristics

Generally speaking, we are influenced by a kind of ethnocentrism: we consider that our own patterns for behavior...