Familial Health Traditions Assignment

What are your family’s traditional health beliefs and practices?
What remedies and/or methods do you use to maintain, protect, and restore health?
Do you know the health and illness beliefs and practices that were or are part of your heritage?

Instructions: 

Interview 1 family member who have had an influence in your life. Make sure he/she is from a different generation from you so you can learn more about your family’s heritage. If you don’t feel close to your traditional family, identify “family members of choice”. We may choose to adopt other people as our families, having closer and more trusting relationships than found in some traditional families.

Come up with a list of questions to ask your family member. As a guideline only, you can start with questions on the Heritage Assessment Tool in Appendix E of the Spector text. Use your knowledge of what you have learned in the previous modules to come up with in-depth questions.  The purpose of this interview is to understand you and your family member’s views on health and illness.

In 500-1000 words (about 1-2 pages), tell about who you interviewed and why. Describe what you learned about your familial ethno-cultural heritage and your family’s beliefs are in regards to health and illness. Why do you engage in specific health practices? For example, why would a German immigrant give sick family members hot potato soup? Are there any health practices you have adopted that may be the same or different from those of your family. In your paper answer the following questions:

• Who did you interview?
• What is your family’s ethno-cultural heritage? That is, what nation(s) did the immigrant generations come to the United States from? What was/is their religion(s)?
• What is health to you and your family? Has it changed?
• What methods are/were employed by your family to maintain, preserve and restore health? What “home remedies” were/are used? (List and describe some examples)
• Do you practice these health traditions? Are there any practices that you do not use anymore? Any health tradition that you want to continue practicing?
• How consistent or inconsistent are you with your traditional cultural heritage?