PROGRAM HIGHLIGHT: BOSTON HEALING LANDSCAPE PROJECT

There is an increasing awareness of the difficulty that can emerge when different cultures clash in the medical arena. Immigrants often bring healing traditions, usually religion-based, that are alien to American doctors. "Medical training these days has moved in the direction of looking for ways to integrate the very important physiological analysis [with] the patient-centered view of what is going on," said Linda Barnes, director of the six-year-old Boston Healing Landscape Project.

The project, run by the pediatrics department at the Boston University School of Medicine, logs information about immigrant religious and cultural traditions for use by local doctors and medical students. It also strives to educate members of the medical community on how their beliefs might color treatment strategies. The project has vast online library of resources about different nations and cultural traditions: Boston Healing Landscape Project (http://www.bmc.org/pediatrics/special/bhlp/html_index.htm)-

Medical schools across the country are increasingly incorporating such lessons into their curriculums, said Barnes, a medical anthropologist with expertise in world religions. They do so for good reasons.

"If the doctor is pursuing only his or her interpretation of what's gone wrong and if that radically differs from what the patient and family think is going wrong, it may be much harder to persuade the family that the most serious aspects of the [illness] are being addressed" by medicine, she said.

Total reliance on religion over medical care can be dangerous, but "it's more common [for immigrants] to mix and match" the two, said Barnes.

-Adapted from: Doctors learn of religious remedies, By Rich Barlow, The Boston Globe, September 15, 2007.

09/07