Community Health Systems in the Rural American South: Linking People and Policy

A cultural perspective of health care systems can provide health care providers and policymakers with a broader understanding of the issues they face when planning and implementing new health programs in communities. Healthcare tales place in a community setting while health care policy is developed at an entirely different level in the larger socioeconomic system. In this study the author attempts to link the community level systems of health with those of the policy level system and allow for a comparison of the convergence and divergence of people's health beliefs and behavior with those of policymakers and of medical anthropology in Coberly.