Health, Kinship, and Lay Epidemiology among Bangladeshi Immigrants in Birmingham, UK: A Case for Medical Anthropology

Failure of managing NCDs (non-communicable diseases) worldwide is a serious concern for public health. For the persistence of health scenario, this paper asks why even after awareness programs and health interventions, NCDs e.g. diabetes and heart disease are still a threat to the population. To reveal this answer, the settlement of Bangladeshis in  Birmingham, UK, drew our  attention because they share a unique set of cultural settings where the first generation was brought up in a certain cultural setup and the second generation was exposed to  both their indigenous culture as well as the  cultural setup of their current environment.Therefore, understanding how kinship, age, and cultural environment formed the health beliefs of two generations, also referred as lay knowledge, which public health might have overlooked, may help to unveil potential factors of  management failure of NCDs. The formation of individuals’ knowledge, beliefs and practices are not homogeneous rather cultur...