Health Care

The American health care system is hard enough to navigate, with its exorbitant costs, byzantine layers, and arcane procedures. For Latinos, language barriers and cultural background make this challenge particularly daunting, with the result that some prefer to rely on folk remedies and traditions and stay outside of the system altogether.This work highlights the myriad problems Latinos face in becoming fully acculturated consumers of health care. Its series of chapters by expert contributors bridges the communication gap between mainstream medical professionals who need to understand the Latino worldview and Latinos that need to adapt to the puzzling complexity of providers and insurers that make up the American health care system.

Backed by research using quantitative methods and other techniques, Health Care's seven chapters cover topics ranging from infant care to teenage dating and sexual mores to prescription medication use by older adults. Much of the coverage focuses on problems of access and the ways in which Latinos move between mainstream health care, and the world of traditional remedies provided by botanicas (shops specializing in herbs and other healing items) and curanderos (folk healers).