...Linda’s Heritage Assessment Paper Cultural differences abound in America today. Approaches to health also differ from one culture to another. People are shaped by their traditions and use traditional ways to satisfy their needs for better health (Agec, 2012). America is a melting pot of different cultures. This cultural diversity comes with differences in health traditions and health decisions. It could be a religious approach to health or a cultural tradition. Health has a different meaning for different people. So, everyone has a different approach to his or her health ( Alpa, 2007). Cultural heritage is an important of one’s economic, social and health issues. It helps one understand someone else’s health heritage, as well as traditional health methods that are used to maintain, protect, and restore health. Applying these concepts makes it easier to deal with a person’s physical, mental, and spiritual beliefs. Different cultures have different values and beliefs of health, disease, illness, birth, and death. It is essential to open a pathway for the effective communication of others values and beliefs, in regards to health, illness, family support as well as spiritual values ( Agec, 2012). Health concerns though practiced in all traditions, varies among different cultures. To become aware of another’s culture and health traditions can enable one to better understand and respect another’s cultural traditions, health...
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...The American track record of its treatment to African Americans is saturated discrimination and segregation. To fight against the separate but equal reality African Americans, chose different ways to protest against that reality. It was through the different forms of writings that some educated and distinguished African American writers tried to portray the notion of double consciousness. Double consciousness is a term created by famous Harlem Renaissance writer W.E.B DuBois. The term double consciousness defines the action of African Americans to not only view themselves from their own unique perspective, but to also view themselves as they might be perceived by others ( in this case white people). Harlem Renaissance period provided the African American writers with the opportunity to expose the majority to double consciousness. It allowed the Caucasians to see the internal conflict of keeping with one’s heritage but wanting to make it in America under “white” standards. W.E.B Du Bois first citied double consciousness in The Souls of Black Folk and his writings signify “how a veil has come to be put over African-Americans, so that others do not see them as they are; African-Americans are obscured in America; they cannot be seen clearly, but only through the lens of race prejudice. Till this very day many African-Americans feel “unwanted” in America. I think back to a news video I saw about a black man named Earl Sampson that was arrested fifty six times and stopped and...
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...Heritage Assessment Nurses have been trained to respect the beliefs and cultural choices of others because patient’s cultural beliefs and rituals influence patient care and outcomes (Anderson, 2012). Nurses need to become aware of patients beliefs, values and rituals to ensure competent and safe patient care (Edelman & Greiner, 2010). The heritage assessment is useful because it is an important step in building cultural competency through interviewing the patient and determining the things the patient value and respect most in life (Sankaran, 2007). Heritage assessments give patients an opportunity to express their beliefs, values and rituals. Respect is shown to the patient by respecting their beliefs and rituals as closely as possible without hindering patient care. This paper will discuss the benefits of using a heritage assessment in evaluating the needs of the whole patient, interviews of people from different cultures, identify common health traditions of the three cultures and evaluate how families subscribe to these traditions and practices. Cultural competency involves more than just asking questions, but it opens up the diversity of the patient’s culture. Nurses must become aware of their own cultural biases and focus on the cultural beliefs and values of the patient by performing a heritage assessment (Edelman & Greiner, 2010). This heritage assessment will give the nurse a clearer picture of the patient’s background and in the process will improve the quality of...
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...Heritage Assessment Heritage is who we are, where we come from, it’s our history. Traditionally the word heritage means one back ground or tradition. Each individual’s heritage varies between different cultures and consists of determination of one’s ethnic, religious, and cultural background (Spector, 2009). The heritage assessment tool helps healthcare professionals evaluate someone’s physical, mental, and spiritual beliefs which in turn helps with determining traditional health methods such as health maintenance, health protection, and health restoration. It also helps in opening a pathway for effective communication between the patient and health care provider to understand ones culture, beliefs, as well as their health traditions. The greater the person’s identification with a traditional heritage, the greater number of positive responses they will have on the assessment (Spector, 2009). This paper will compare three heritages Hispanic, African American, and Chinese looking at the difference between health methods and traditions and will also assess the author’s heritage. Health maintenance is how one manages their health by preventing and promoting good health. The Hispanic cultures hold a very strong religious belief. The majority come from a Catholic background and relies heavily on God and prayer. They sometimes view good health as a reward from God and illness as a punishment for wrongdoing. Hispanics are very family oriented going beyond the nuclear family...
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...According to the dictionary, a community is a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage. The community in which I live in is about equal in the amount of Hispanic, and African American residents; however, it appears to have fewer Caucasians than both Hispanics and African Americans. In this paper I will consider relations within my community, local government, schools, and workplace. I will also discuss the problems that an in-depth interview with Emmanuel King from King’s Group Home for Children (a local community children’s advocate) and my own personal accounts have made clear. Community relations within my community are positive for all the members in the areas of government, schools, and workplaces with only a few minor issues. Most members in my community do not look like me. I live in a mostly Hispanic and African American communities so most of my neighbors do not look like me. Even though my neighborhood is comprised of mostly Hispanics and African Americans, my community has a great range of Caucasians, African Americans, Asians, Arabs, and Hispanics. The people in my community get along extremely well. When it comes to the working environments in my community everything varies. Because my community is home to the state government as well as the local government and the fact that it is a larger city and home to the state capitol the amount of jobs increases and...
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...subsequent decades, the main dispute was between two concepts: assimilation versus cultural heritage. Assimilation is a controversial topic that some writers deemed necessary to live in a new culture, whereas others believed that expressing and retaining cultural heritage, or the mosaic idea, is essential. A specific poet and writer that supported the mosaic was Sherman Alexie. Like Alexie, countless others used poetry and literature as a call to action for their beliefs, whether it was assimilation, mosaic, or a mixture...
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...immediately aware of as they enter the area. They include Native-American, African-American, Protestant, European, "Cracker", Hispanic-Latino, and Cuban. Because there are so many variations of these cultures choosing just three was difficult, but for my project I will be focusing on our African-American, Hispanic-Latino, and "Cracker" populations. During this project I will address the many and varied differences between these cultures on many different levels including personal or family differences, social differences and educational differences. I expect to gain a greater understanding about these cultures during this process and by gaining this understanding I will be better equipped to combine students from these cultures into a classroom of learners that are able to succeed on all levels of History education. Because I do teach World History having a classroom full of diverse cultures lends itself to a variety of teaching activities and extra curricular learning. Miami-Dade Community College President Eduardo J. Padron. Said it best when he said "Our classrooms are laboratories for cultural diversity and the disciplines are enriched when students contribute various cultural perspectives," It has become increasingly clear that we must get creative in culturally diverse ways in order to pull all of our students into the learning culture in equal ways. I spent several days researching the material that you are about to read. My biggest source of information was the internet, but I also...
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...of Two Texts Preserving Cultural Heritage- Only the Truth Can Set Them Free Individual heritage can and does shape generations to come. Americans, for the most part, accept this as an important and necessary ingredient in the fabric which sets us apart from other cultures in the world. It is a heritage that is uniquely ours. Cultural traditions and stories provide a basis upon which generations to come can connect to all the factors that have shaped how they are living today. The next generation learns from the last and ancestral stories are repeated, passed down and incorporated into the fabric of the uniqueness of individuals within a culture. Within the vast boundaries of our nation there are unique and geographical cultures that have succeeded in surviving despite the odds and then there are the stories of those who didn’t succeed. Both cultures build upon bonding born from the hardship of working the soil in rural America, but only one of these cultures has found a way to liberate its people and share the truths associated with those struggles. Maya Angelou speaks to the African American Culture in her work “Reclaiming our Home Place”. She captures the tragic yet rich history of the America’s south and how celebrating this history as a culture has set the once enslaved African American free. (Angelou) Further to the northwest, based in the rural by-ways of America is the story of the people who claimed the plains as their heritage as told by Kathleen Norris in “Can...
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...Culture, Heritage & Health Culture & Cultural Competency in Health Promotion Culture, Heritage & Health This paper will discuss culture and the cultural characteristics that can be associated with various groups and the affect it can have on one’s health in aspects of health protection, maintenance and restoration. It will also discuss the usefulness of a heritage assessment tool in providing better care for patients. The differences will be viewed based on culture in health protection, maintenance and restoration. A heritage assessment tool is a means to capture a snapshot view of one’s culture/heritage. Culture is defined as “an element of ethnicity, consists of shared patterns of values and behaviors that characterize a particular group. It is “shaped by values, beliefs, norms, and practices that are shared by members of the same cultural group” (Edelman & Mandle, 2006) In examining a patient’s heritage, it can provide an opportunity for better understanding in providing the best care possible for a patient. Madeleine Leininger is the founder of the transcultural nursing theory, but many have followed in her footsteps and built on that initial idea. The Giger and Davidhizar Transcultural Model is another tool that can be used. The model encompasses six cultural phenomena to be assessed: 1) Communication, which encompasses verbal and non-verbal communication and can be seen as the biggest barrier in working with clients from different backgrounds...
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...Heritage Assessment Health Tradition and Cultural Comparison Sharon Nodine Grand Canyon University: NRS-429V March 20, 2016 “A growing realization that the United States is not a ‘melting pot’ in which immigrants assimilate into the mainstream culture, but a country of many cultures has led to a growing appreciation of different ethno-cultural groups” (EuroMed Info, n.d.). The Heritage Tool and it’s five competencies is designed to provide a framework for nurses to gain insight of the cultural practices of patients in order to provide culturally competent care that will result in better health outcomes (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2008). The Hispanic-American Assessment “Latinos comprise nearly 16 percent of the U.S. population, and this proportion is anticipated to increase to 30 percent by 2050” (Juckett, 2013). He continues to say, barriers to care have resulted in striking disparities in quality of health care for these patients. These barriers include language, lack of insurance, different cultural beliefs, and in some cases, illegal immigration status, mistrust, and illiteracy. The National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services address these concerns with recommendations for culturally competent care, language services, and organizational support. Latinos have disproportionately higher rates...
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...The formation of self-identity is a process each of us must go through on our journey to adulthood. The development of a system by which to lead our adult lives is difficult for all children, but especially for African American children. In addition to defining their personal character, they must define themselves in terms of their culture and nationality – African American and American. One of the ways in which black children create their self-identity is through the illustrations they see in the literature they are exposed to. We look to African American children’s books to help promote self-esteem, cultural identity, and pride for African American children. As books are read to them, children concentrate on the images, and become subject to the impressions these images create. Children’s books that are authentic to African American culture, physicality and intelligence are few and far between. With consideration to our theme, “Black Literary Contemplations on Thomas Jefferson and Western Enlightenment Ideologies of Race and Humanity” and Thomas Jefferson’s Query XIV, it is my belief that the images in children’s literature are important to development of self- identity and esteem in African American children. In Query XIV, in his comparison of whites and blacks, Thomas Jefferson commented on the beauty of whites and blacks, and critiqued blacks because of their “immovable veil of black” and lack of flowing hair. He then stated that black men favored white women over black...
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...R. Sarenka Smith 13 December 2013 Race, Civil Rights, and Literature—Paper #3 Cultural Heritage Through the Creation of Art and Language: Recovering Ancestral Identity in Paule Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow “People who can’t call their nation. For one reason or another they just don’ know. Is a hard thing. I don’ even like to think about it.” --Lebert Joseph, Praisesong for the Widow Paule Marshall’s autobiographical article “From the Poets in the Kitchen,” published a month before her novel Praisesong for the Widow, describes stories from her childhood that reflect the immigrant experience, addressing the constant presence of the Caribbean and its influence on Marshall’s life while growing up in the United States. Marshall’s mother and her female friends, immigrants from Barbados, would gather in the Marshall kitchen after their days of working in low-paid jobs to chat, gossip, and “tackle the great issues of the time” including the economy, politics, war, and their nostalgia for home. They discussed their adopted home, America—acknowledging both the racism they endured, and also the wealth of possibilities that the country offered. These women and their stories were, for Marshall, the origins of her fiction. She asserts that a writer’s ability to render everyday speech is derived from close listening, and the talk that “filled the kitchen” additionally functioned as a kind of therapeutic catharsis, a release of creative energy. The special kind of...
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...so proud. I sit here and think about my heritage and what my people before me went through getting to America. Today, I am a free woman because of what they endured. I have so many liberties but they were not so lucky. Many of my ancestors were brought here against their will. They were brought here as slaves to serve the European white families. Too many Africans were taken from their homes to be sold into slavery. For many years, my people were beaten and treated very cruelly working in the fields and serving others. These slave trades allowed America to prosper and expand but ruined our villages in Africa. During most of the 17th and 18th centuries, slavery was the law in every one of the 13 colonies, North and South alike, and was employed by its most prominent citizens, including many of the founders of the new United States. The importation of slaves was provided for in the U.S. Constitution, and continued to take place on a large scale even after it was made illegal in 1808 (Learning Page, 2005). Even after slavery was illegal, many Americans challenged and resisted the civilization of my people. To think that so many African Americans were just trying to have something of their own, land and a family, and others were just trying to belittle them. My ancestors worked hard to make a living but were still not seen as an equal to the white man. The Underground Railroad was the saving grace for so many African Americans. Many activists were working undercover...
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...Mountain” in the June 23, 1926 edition of The Nation. In the article is describes as a manifesto in which Langston Hughes “skillfully argues the need for both race pride and artistic independence.” (Rampersad, 2013) Countee Cullen is somewhat viewed as a mystery. Facts about his location of birth, and early childhood life cannot be exactly pinpointed. Originally it was claimed by Cullen on a New York transcript that he was born in Louisville, Kentucky but later claimed New York City as his official place of birth. The way that Countee Cullen contributed to the Harlem Renaissance was through the many talents he displayed as a poet, children’s writer, novelist, translator, playwright, and anthologist; which allow him to become a major African American literary figure able to cross over into many different genres. With the poem known as “I Have a Rendezvous with Life”, Cullen’s reputation began to rise, and the concept of “racial self awareness” began to rise as well, and at an alarming rate. (Early, 2013) Double consciousness was a term originally created by W.E.B. Du Bois and...
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...inheritance. She characterizes the confusion and misguidance of young African Americans in the late 60s and 70s. This is apparent in her interactions with her mother and sister. As Sexton notes, Dee "considers herself as cultured, and beyond the abased quality of the lives lived by her mother and sister" (par. 3). She makes her feelings clear when she attempts to "take" the quilts Mama had promised to Maggie: "Maggie can't appreciate these quilts... she'd probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use" (Walker, 103). By using the quilts for purposes other than their original intent she believes that she is respecting her heritage, but this is not the case: her desire to put them on display is "really not quite so different from the white capitalist cashing in on ethnic artworks" (Sexton, par. 4) Not only is she conforming to the worst of American ideals, but she is rejecting and disrespecting her own cultural heritage-- all under the pretenses of preserving it. It is in this sense that she is the "embodiment of the struggle for a unifying identity," because she has not yet come to understand her place in society as both an African and an American. In great contrast with Dee, Maggie is a simplistic and good-hearted person. These characteristics add dimension to the story, and make her a "more likely bearer of sacredness, tradition, and true value than her "brighter" sister". She understands the true meaning of heritage. Just as her sister asserts, Maggie is "backward...
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