An exploration of white, Asian and Afro‐Caribbean peoples’ concepts of health and illness causation

Abstract

This article is based on secondary analysis of the Health and Lifestyle Survey. Matched controls from the white respondents were selected for the 129 Asians and 94 Afro‐Caribbeans. The analysis concentrates on concepts of health and illness; lay concepts of illness causation; aetiological notions in relation to specific disease categories; and a look at smoking behaviour. Because of the quality of the ethnicity variable on the Health and Lifestyle Survey we regard this as an exploratory study, generating hypotheses which can be investigated through more carefully designed studies