Health beliefs among British Bangladeshis

BMJ 1998;317:412 ( 8 August )

Letters

Health beliefs among British Bangladeshis

Whole community must be studied

Health promotion for Bangladeshi women in general practice must be appropriate

Authors' reply

Whole community must be studied

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ Greenhalgh et al attempt to combine the techniques of qualitative research with anthropological investigation, buttheir paper is flawed.¹ They draw attention to Bengali viewson diabetes in an east London population without giving theirreasons for being there. Is this genuine ethnography or is itan exercise in health promotion that has used ethnography to giveit credibility?

Ethnicity may be a source of fascination, but it is insulting to set ourselves up to study it because, as in the case of theNative Americans and the Aboriginals, we become "interested" ina culture only when that culture no longer poses a threat to us.We are not anthropologists, we are doctors in the late 20th centuryand work in multicultural settings that we find as confusing asthose immigrants whom we choose to study.

As general practitioners we work at the interface between a patient's conception . . . [Full text of this article]