IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v47y1998i12p2075-2085.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Beliefs related to breast health practices: the perceptions of South Asian women living in Canada

Author

Listed:
  • Bottorff, Joan L.
  • Johnson, Joy L.
  • Bhagat, Radhika
  • Grewal, Sukhdev
  • Balneaves, Lynda G.
  • Clarke, Heather
  • Hilton, B. Ann

Abstract

Breast cancer is becoming a major concern for many South Asian women. Clinical observations of women from a South Asian community living in Canada revealed an under use of early detection strategies. The purpose of this qualitative ethnoscience study was to examine breast health practices from the perspective of South Asian women to provide a foundation for the development of culturally suitable breast health services for this group. Open-ended interviews were conducted with a convenience sample of 50 South Asian women over the age of 30 who had not been diagnosed with breast cancer. Adequate representation of the main religious groups (i.e. Sikh, Hindu, Muslim and Christian) was ensured through sampling techniques. Analysis of translated interviews involved identification of themes and the development of a taxonomy to represent relationships among emerging cultural themes and domains. Four central domains of beliefs related to breast health practices were identified: beliefs about a woman's calling, beliefs about cancer, beliefs about taking care of your breasts and beliefs about accessing services. These beliefs hold important implications for how health promotion strategies should be structured and offered. In particular, attention must be paid to the language that is used to talk about breast cancer, the importance of the role of the family in women's health decisions and traditions related to using narratives to share information and advice.

Suggested Citation

  • Bottorff, Joan L. & Johnson, Joy L. & Bhagat, Radhika & Grewal, Sukhdev & Balneaves, Lynda G. & Clarke, Heather & Hilton, B. Ann, 1998. "Beliefs related to breast health practices: the perceptions of South Asian women living in Canada," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 47(12), pages 2075-2085, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:47:y:1998:i:12:p:2075-2085
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(98)00346-3
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. James Ted McDonald & Angela Sherman, 2008. "Determinants of Mammography Usage across Rural and Urban Regions of Canada," Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers 238, McMaster University.
    2. Joanne Crawford & Angela Frisina & Tricia Hack & Faye Parascandalo, 2015. "A Peer Health Educator Program for Breast Cancer Screening Promotion: Arabic, Chinese, South Asian, and Vietnamese Immigrant Women’s Perspectives," Nursing Research and Practice, Hindawi, vol. 2015, pages 1-13, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:47:y:1998:i:12:p:2075-2085. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.