Challenges for Primary Health Care in China: An Ethnographic Perspective

Abstract

This talk examines the development of primary health care in contemporary China from the perspective of medical anthropology. By focusing on the sociocultural dimensions of health and illness, medical anthropologists seek to understand health care not purely as a form of 'cure' or return to individual health, but as a process and set of relations produced around the well-being of others. Drawing on research I have conducted on the Chinese health care system over the past decade, I will highlight the value of an ethnographic perspective for understanding transformations in the Chinese health care system. I will discuss challenges facing the renewed efforts to establish primary health care, including the complications posed by overspecialization, the pressures of overcrowding in Chinese hospitals, and the difficulties of promoting home-based health care.