The social and cultural context of risk and prevention: Food and physical activity in an urban aboriginal community

One of the key public health challenges facing indigenous and other minorit y communities is how to develop and implement effective, acceptable, and su stainable strategies for the prevention of non-insulin-dependent diabetes m ellitus (NIDDM). In this article, the authors describe how an ethnographic approach was used to contextualize the behavioral risk factors for NIDDM an d applied to the development of a more meaningful and appropriate epidemiol ogical risk factor survey instrument for an urban Aboriginal population in Australia. The overall research design comprised a mixture of qualitative a nd quantitative methods. The ethnographic study showed that the complex web of meanings that tie people to their family and community can and should b e taken into account in any social epidemiology of health and illness if th e findings are to have any effective and long-term potential to contribute to successful public health interventions targeting these behavioral risk f actors.