Heritage Assessment Essay

Words: 1195
Pages: 5

Heritage Assessment
Culture is a pattern of behavior and values shared by an ethnic group. Cultural heritage is a set of traditions within the culture that is hand down from the older generation to the younger generation within the family. These traditions influence the family’s decisions in relation to their diet, education, daily living activities, religious beliefs and practices and also health and illness beliefs. In this paper, the author will focus on the usefulness of applying a heritage assessment in evaluating the needs of a person as a whole. Three different cultures including authors will be discussed about the health maintenance, health promotion, and health restoration. The author will also evaluate health traditions which

(Edelman, 2010) In Chinese culture, medicine teaches that health is a state of spiritual and physical harmony with nature. Health and illness depends on the body’s state of balance. A person’s body is not his personal property. It must be well cared and maintained. Chinese believes that there should be a balance between hot (yang) and cold (yin). There are several health maintenance traditions in Chinese culture like coin rubbing and self-restraints of emotions. ("," )
The concept of health protection is related to protect peoples’ health from preventable and communicable diseases. In Muslims, health protection has a significant value, through cleanliness and vaccination for children. Muslims have a ritual of cleaning before prayers every time and also they fast one month of a year in Ramadan from dawn to dusk, that is to learn to eat in moderation and a balance diet("," ). In Hispanic culture people are still not aware of preventive measures due to lack of education and barriers like language and finances, a major Hispanic population are uninsured and they don’t have legal status here in US. These factors place the Hispanics for a great risk for getting chronic and communicable diseases. In Chinese culture, they practice balance of hot and cold in their diet. Drinking green tea is a very big tradition in Chinese after meals.(Phillip, February, 15th 2011)
Health restoration is, when the disease is already there and