Healing Our Differences

Healing Our Differences: The Crisis of Global Health and the Politics of Identity asserts that the public health mission and the question of an individual identity are inseparable. Airhihenbuwa deftly explains how the rise in a more uniform, apolitical view of healthcare and health services leads to the devaluation of individual cultures and communities that in turn leads to inequality in the outcome of health care. Citing examples in African and African American communities, Airhihenbuwa shows how an individual cultural need can be lost or silenced in the face of a single uniform statement of public health care. The opportunity presented in this book is one that allows readers to move beyond the individualized notion of identity by allowing instead a collective notion of identity, representative of a community with its own needs, cultural expressions, and meanings. This book affirms public health as a landscape where differences that make differences are promoted and encouraged. Such a public health landscape promotes multiple truths rather than a universal truth.