Michelle Prinzo, Week 8

Breast Cancer Awareness T-Shirt Design

Do you love boobs? Over 200 college students on the University of Cincinnati's campus love boobs enough to wear this shirt. Some of them think its funny, some identify with the breast cancer awareness message (more clearly visible by the pink ribbon on the back of the shirt), and some of them bought the shirt to support the mission of the American Cancer Society. I personally fall into all three of these categories. So what does this have to do with culture and health?  I pulled this picture out of my Relay For Life fundraising files to give an example of how peers can influence one anothers' beliefs on health. The mission of CAC, the organization responsible for these shirts and the self examination shower signs (below) is to help our peers become aware and encourage the practice of self- examinations. Will this approach work with our peers? It seemed to. Consistent with Mandala model of health shown in the Vaughn text, our organization was attempting to influence our peers lifestyle through a cultural and communication context. Would this approach work for people of other cultures? I doubt it. I think that this approach could be seen as embarrassing and socially unacceptable in other contexts. For example, I would NEVER dare to wear my shirt or distribute such information to the residents at my grandmother's independent living home, nor would I think it was appropriate to wear such a shirt in front of my first grade students. I would take very different approaches to educate these populations about cancer prevention. 

 The example I used above is fairly simple, but I  the affect culture can have on health is personally one of the hardest contexts to understand-- specially in situations in which people deny or go against what I believe to be best practices in medecine or patient treatment. After reading this week's chapters, I have a better idea of how much culture affects health.