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Epidemiological or Ecological Approach This approach to Medical Anthropology focuses on the interaction of biological and cultural factors in health and disease. It studies the factors that increase or decrease peoples chances of developing a disease. Sometimes, cultural practices increase the chances of getting sick.

Medical anthropologists study health and illness as biosocial states of being in the lifeworlds of different populations, are attentive to links and flows between macro- and microenvironments, and pay close attention to the distribution (and maldistribution) of diseases and resources promoting health.

Medical anthropology is the study of how health and illness are shaped, experienced, and understood in the context of cultural, historical, and political forces.

Medical anthropologists study topics such as global health, local health systems, indigenous medicine, violence and trauma, disability and the body, gender and sexuality, biotechnology, bioethics, and social suffering.

Anthropology compares human societies across the globe and across time. We compare present and past forms of government or legal and religious belief systems, for example. We compare social structures, like family dynamics, and study transnational corporations.

Medical anthropologists primarily study folk medicine, ethnoetiologies of disease, and alternative conceptions of well being and the body. They rarely if ever work with or within the field of biomedicine that predominates wealthy nations and urban centers.

While medical anthropologists study a wide range of issues and topics, key concepts include health disparities, global health, medical technologies, and bioethics.

Medical anthropologists examine how the health of individuals, larger social formations, and the environment are affected by interrelationships between humans and other species; cultural norms and social institutions; micro and macro politics; and forces of globalization as each of these affects local worlds.