Why are so many Czech Women Dying of Breast Cancer?: Understanding Illness, Detection, and Treatment in the Czech Republic (Research Brief)

My IREX project proposal outlined several questions that I sought answers to during my year in the Czech Republic, 2001-2002: • Do Czech women delay seeking medical treatment when they sense something abnormal in their breast or surrounding tissue? If so, why? • To what extent do folk beliefs about cancer, how it develops, and how it should be treated affect how a woman deals with this disease in her personal life? • What types of healing strategies do Czech women use in addition to or outside of biomedicine (including folk medicine, complementary and/or alternative therapies) and when and how do they make decisions about the therapies they choose? • Finally, how do Czech women conceptualize their bodies and femininity in post communist Czech Republic and cope with the changes in their bodies following lumpectomy and/or mastectomy?

Download the pdf at the top of this page for the full brief.

Denise A. Kozikowski, of the University of California at Los Angeles, was a 2001-02 Individual Advanced Research Opportunities (IARO) fellow.