Folk medicine and health beliefs: an Appalachian perspective

This article examines Appalachian folk medicine and considers the importance of utilizing an integrative theory, the Health Belief Model, to understand the use of alternative medicine in the United States. The author examines the need for social workers and other health care providers to further assess the roles of folk medicine in an Appalachian client population. The author creates linkages among the limited writings in the literature regarding folk medical practices of Appalachians and also draws examples of folk medicine usage from qualitative research and professional intervention with this client group. The author focuses on how mainstream health care professionals may assess the role of folk medicine in the lives of their clients by approaching folk medicine as a focal and culturally-imbedded component of their clients' overall health care. Moreover, the author addresses the need for health care professionals to become not only aware of folk medical practices, but to act as advocates for culturally competent health care within the larger health care delivery system which largely overlooks or downplays the significance of folk medicine. In an age of expensive and constricted mainstream health care services and the implementation of managed care, the author examines how folk medical practices factor into primary health care.