Culture Matters in High Risk, Lead Poisoned Communities Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Lead poisoning in Camden City, New Jersey is different from lead poisoning in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. This statement raised a lot of eyebrows and upset quite a few people at a lead poisoning consortium meeting. My peers failed to see that culture is the by-product of lived experience and serves as an indicator for health care beliefs and practices. Little is known about the health care practices of urban African Americans because they experience a culture that is non traditional, yet mainstream America continues to set a childhood lead poisoning (clp) agenda for a cultural group it does not know. An examination of the urban African American mother's voice (the telling of one's story) is eerily absent form the clp landscape. The primary research question for this ethnographic case study was, "what is the lived reality of urban mothers of color whose children are at risk of becoming lead poisoned in Camden City?" I also explored, "how might knowledge of this lived reality affect the clp agenda for high risk communities?"

published proceedings

  • Practicing Anthropology

author list (cited authors)

  • Hill-Jackson, V.

citation count

  • 0

complete list of authors

  • Hill-Jackson, Valerie

publication date

  • July 2005