Paper short abstract:

Is the notion of cultural epidemiology productive or not and what are the research and policy implications.

Paper long abstract:

Anthropology and public health have engaged with each other for decades in attempts to understand, explain and combat illness and disease at population and community levels. At least since Janes, Stall, & Gifford (1986), efforts have been made to combine the epistemological and methodological underpinnings of the two disciplines with limited success and acceptance. The banner of cultural epidemiology is sometimes used to describe these labours but is more often than not rejected for insufficiently acknowledging the contributions of one or the other approaches. In this paper we discuss our experiences of bringing together a collection of works by social researchers and epidemiologists under the cultural epidemiology banner that explicitly include socio-cultural explanations for population level health and illness in wealthy and economically developing societies in Asia and Australasia. We ask whether the notion of cultural epidemiology is productive or not and what are the research and policy implications.