More than Gatekeepers: Provider Cultural Capital and Bridging the Primary-Specialist Care Gap

• In Event: 343 - Section on Medical Sociology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 08. Healthcare Professions II

Abstract

Healthcare providers engage in practices to help patients navigate structural barriers to healthcare access. Providers coordinate transportation, seek financial assistance for surgeries and treatments, and call in favors to get their patients free or reduced cost care. These care coordination strategies executed by providers, and primary care providers in particular, go beyond the traditional “gatekeeper” role. In order to coordinate care despite economic, social, political, and geographic barriers to patient access, providers develop and mobilize localized forms of cultural health capital, or health-relevant cultural capital that helps patients manage exclusion from mainstream healthcare resources. Using ethnographic data on providers working with community health centers in two South Texas counties on the Mexican border, this study elucidates how cultural capital resources on the “supply side” of healthcare may bolster healthcare access.

Author

• Erin Fanning Madden, University of New Mexico