Applied Anthropology and International Health: Retrospect and Prospect

George M. Foster is the 1982 recipient of the Malinowski Award, presented at the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology, Lexington, Kentucky. This annual award is given to a senior colleague in recognition of efforts to understand and serve the needs of the world through social science. The following is Professor Foster's acceptance speech. IS A HIGH HONOR INDEED to be the recipient of the Tenth Malinowski Award, thus to be associated with the names of Bronislaw Malinowski and of my nine distinguished predecessor recipients. When Peter New advised me of my selection, I experienced mixed emotions: first, pleasure and appreciation, and second, concern as to my topic. Fortunately, colleagues came to my rescue; several suggested that I talk about the involvement of anthropologists in health programs, a field to which I have been exposed for more than 30 years. Hence, the title of this address. Specifically, I propose to note the early events that drew anthropologists to the health field, to take stock of where we are today, and to suggest the opportunities and problems we may encounter in the future development of the field.' To limit my remarks to reasonable length I exclude mental health and family planning, and restrict myself largely to American anthropology. I use the term international health to denote those national and efforts designed to improve the health care services of peoples who, until recent years, have relied largely or entirely on indigenous medical resources. These include most of the people, both urban and rural, in developing countries, and substantial numbers of minority ethnic groups in some industrialized countries. The common characteristic of these programs is that they are cross-cultural: historically, health care providers and health care recipients have represented distinct cultural, social or ethnic groups. Whatever the setting, the basic problems associated with planning and delivery of health care, and utilization of services, are essentially the same. A generation ago physicians and anthropologists alike defined the problem of providing better health care for traditional peoples as how to persuade them to accept scientific medicine. As anthropologists, our fundamental research task was to learn those things about the health beliefs and practices of these peoples that would enable health care providers to convince them of the superiority of modern medicine over their traditional therapies. Our practical goal was to further effective cross-cultural communication which, we assumed, would lead to scientifically acceptable health beliefs and behavior.