Cecil Helman

Prof Cecil Helman, who passed away on Monday, the 15th June 2009, was widely known as the author of the classic textbook, Culture, Health and Illness, which had an enormous impact in encouraging engagement with anthropology, especially from biomedical practitioners and others working in the arena of applied public health. He was awarded the Society of Medical Anthropology Career Achievement Medal of the American Anthropological Association in December 2004, and in September 2005 he received the Lucy Mair Medal in Applied Anthropology from the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland to recognise outstanding achievement in the application of anthropology to human wellbeing.

Cecil was an inspired teacher who influenced a whole generation of medical anthropology students with his distinctive clinical insights and his passion for the subject. In addition to his work on the Masters degree in medical anthropology, Cecil also contributed to the Centre for Research in International Medical Anthropology (CRIMA).

Background:
Prof Cecil Helman qualified as a doctor at the University of Cape Town medical school, and then took a Postgraduate Diploma in Social Anthropology at University College London. He combined both clinical and anthropological perspectives on a variety of issues in health, illness, and medical care. As well as teaching at Brunel, he was a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Primary Care & Population Sciences, Royal Free & University College Medical School (University College London), and for many years he worked part-time in clinical practice as a family practitioner.

His main area of interest were Clinically Applied Medical Anthropology: - the applications of anthropological concepts, research findings, and techniques to actual clinical situations, in both the industrialised and developing worlds.

He wrote the standard textbook in medical anthropology, Culture, Health and Illness. Since first published in 1984, it has been used as a course textbook in 39 different countries, including in 120 universities, medical schools and nursing colleges in the USA and Canada.

In the international sphere, Prof Helman participated in British Council exchange programmes in primary health care, with the Community Health Program, Porto Alegre, Brazil (1989-1991), and as Co-ordinator of British Council exchange programmes with the Department of Primary Care, University of Cape Town, South Africa (1997-2000), and the Department of Family Medicine, University of Transkei, Eastern Cape, South Africa (1997-2004).

He had been a guest lecturer in medical anthropology in many different institutions, both in Britain and abroad, including at Cambridge University, the World Health Organization, as a Visiting Fellow in Social Medicine & Health Policy at Harvard Medical School in 1983/83, where he taught clinically-applied medical anthropology, as a Visiting Professor in the Multicultural Health Programme, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, and as the Hooker Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Anthropology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

Prof Helman  also had a lifelong interest in literature and poetry, and particularly in the role of narrative and creative writing in health and illness.

In January 2006 his memoir 'Suburban Shaman: Tales from Medicine's Frontline' was published.

See also his personal web-site at http://www.cecilhelman.com/.

Awards:
In December 2004 Prof Helman received the prestigious Career Achievement Award of the American Anthropological Association's Society for Medical Anthropology, and in September 2005 he received the 'Lucy Mair Medal in Applied Anthropology' from the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Research:
Prof Helan's research concentrated mainly on non-medical health beliefs about the body, illness, and medical care; as well as on the social, cultural and economic context of medical care in Britain and elsewhere. It included ethnographic studies of English folk beliefs about common respiratory illnesses, and about tranquilliser dependence, as well as studies of the social symbolism of heart disease, especially the 'Type-A Behaviour Pattern' and 'Pseudo-Angina'. At Harvard Medical School in 1983/84 his research focused on the perceptions of psychosomatic disorders of people with asthma, ulcerative colitis, and other conditions. Abroad, he studied Xhosa traditional healers (sangomas) in the Transkei, South Africa, and their relation to the primary care system, and the delivery of primary health care in the shantytowns of Porto Alegre, Brazil, and especially the role of community health workers (agente de saude) in primary care.

Teaching:
Prof Helamn taught two modules on Clinically Applied Medical Anthropology: the first dealing with Basic Concepts in Medical Anthropology, the second focusing on issues in International Health. He also contributed to the Research Methods course.

Selected Publications: