It's flu season, and Penn students are rushing to Student Health Services for vaccinations -- and Professor Frances Barg has an anthropological explanation.
"When someone sneezes, the following things go through my mind," Barg said. "First, I wish that person who sneezed had a tissue. Then I think about getting the flu. Next, I wash my hands and last, I worry about all the old and little people."
In Monday's lecture entitled "Diversity and Cultural Competence in Academia and Health Care," Barg discussed cultural models -- which describe the thought processes that go through people's minds when they come in contact with different situation -- and how they relate to diseases, most notably breast cancer.
Cultural models "provide insight into our own behavior," said Barg, a professor in family practice and community medicine. The lecture, attended by approximately 30 School of Nursing faculty, served as the last of a series hosted by the Nursing School to inform professors about cultural diversity.
Cultural models are much more detailed and complicated when applied to breast cancer, Barg's current track of study.
Barg has recently conducted a study of 41 women diagnosed with breast cancer and 41 West Philadelphia women who have never had breast cancer.
After talking with these women, she began to understand how different people view breast cancer in different ways and have varying cultural models for breast cancer.
For example, one of the women in Barg's study who suffers from breast cancer said, "I was worried about getting my breast cut... you know, being a woman."
Another patient had a more positive outlook and stated, "I said to the cancer you've got to live with me; I don't have to live with you."
These views on breast cancer are just two of many different points that according to Barg result from a media that portrays "wrong attitudes [about breast cancer], which make it hard to understand forms and images."
In a 2001 study from the medical journal Effective Clinical Practice, researchers confirmed that the stories told about breast cancer provide examples of atypical and unreal impacts on women, especially black women.
After explaining her findings, Barg's lecture concluded on a positive note with a flood of questions from interested attendees concerning the further implications of her findings.
