A paper by Project Researcher Hiroshi Habu and Professor Naoki Kondo was published in F1000Research on June 30, 2025. It explores the challenges of applying Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital to public health and epidemiology. Drawing on public health, epidemiology and cultural anthropology, the authors identify five core challenges: 1. the epistemological divergence between Bourdieu’s focus on power structures and public health’s focus on health promotion; 2. the need to consider intervention-oriented cultural capital concept; 3. the need to assess cultural capital at the collective level; 4. the need for cultural capital concept that encompasses human nature beyond the social space; and 5. the unclear and inconsistent definitions of culture across research fields.
To address these challenges, the study proposes a new theoretical framework that introduces “cultural determinants of health,” “cultural well-being” and “contextual validity,” laying the groundwork for “cultural epidemiology,” a quantitative approach to evaluating culture’s role in health outcomes. These insights offer a foundation for future empirical research and policy development that integrate cultural factors into health interventions.
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