Appalachian and Arab health heritage: similarities
A 600-word transcultural paper that asks for similarities where the instinct is to contrast — and where the honest answer is that two unrelated heritages converge on the same practices for different underlying reasons.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 8, 2026
Why does this brief ask for similarities rather than differences?
The verb in the first question is **similarities**, and that is a genuinely unusual instruction worth noticing. Cultural comparison assignments almost always ask for differences, and the reflex to contrast is strong — so a paper that sets Appalachian beliefs against Arab beliefs in alternating paragraphs has answered the question it expected rather than the one asked. You are looking for shared features across two heritages that have almost no historical or geographic connection, which is the interesting part: where two unrelated traditions converge, the convergence usually points at something structural rather than cultural. Differences can appear, but as qualification, not as the organising principle. State in your opening sentence that the paper is looking for convergence, which both commits you to the right structure and shows the marker you read the verb.
Three convergences are well documented and give the paper its spine. **Family as the decision-making unit** rather than the individual patient, which complicates consent processes built around individual autonomy. **Religion and faith as explanatory frameworks** for illness and recovery, so that illness carries meaning beyond pathology and healing is not purely biomedical. And **reliance on informal or traditional healing** alongside, or before, formal services — folk remedies transmitted orally through families and communities in Appalachia, and traditional practice in Arab heritage. Each of these is a similarity you can evidence rather than assert, which is what the two required references are for. Three worked similarities is the right density for 600 words; four becomes a list and two leaves the paper thin.
Be careful with the causal story you tell about those similarities, because the honest account is not the same for both groups. Appalachian folk medicine developed substantially in response to a *lack of access* to formal care, and access constraints persist — one recent survey of an Appalachian medical centre found an average of 11.6 barriers per patient, with over half reporting structural barriers to access and 60.8% a household income under $50,000. Arab heritage practices are not primarily a response to scarcity; they are rooted in religious and social tradition, and the challenges Arab American patients report are more often about worldview, language and modesty than about distance to a clinic. Same surface similarity, different mechanism — say so. Making that distinction explicitly is also the single easiest way to lift this paper above a description of two cultures.
The second question asks how religion or folk belief **influences the delivery** of healthcare, which is a question about clinical practice rather than about belief content. So convert each belief into something that happens, or fails to happen, in a consultation: modesty norms shaping the acceptability of a same-sex clinician or of a physical examination; prayer times and fasting affecting medication scheduling; dietary rules affecting what can be prescribed; family presence changing how information is disclosed and consent obtained; and, in both heritages, a preference for consulting kin or a trusted traditional source before presenting to a service. Delivery is the noun the question uses, and it should be the noun your paragraphs are built on. Framing each one as something a clinician would notice in the room keeps the answer practical rather than anthropological.
Two constraints are worth pinning down before drafting. The brief specifies **600 words** and simultaneously **2 pages**, which do not agree — 600 words is roughly two double-spaced pages, so treat the word count as the binding figure and the page count as its approximation. And it requires a minimum of two evidence-based references **no older than five years**, which is a real constraint in this topic: much of the classic literature on Appalachian folk medicine and on Arab American health beliefs is considerably older. Use older work for background if it helps, but make sure the two that satisfy the requirement are genuinely current, and check publication dates rather than trusting a reading list. Check the word count against the body text only, since title and reference pages do not count toward it.
Element | What the brief asks | The paper that fails |
|---|---|---|
Framing | Similarities between the two heritages | A contrast essay, written by reflex |
Shared feature 1 | Family as decision-making unit | Individual patient autonomy assumed throughout |
Shared feature 2 | Faith as an explanatory framework for illness | Religion mentioned only as ritual |
Shared feature 3 | Traditional or informal healing used alongside formal care | Folk practice treated as ignorance |
Second question | How belief changes delivery in practice | A description of what each group believes |
Sourcing | 2+ evidence-based references under 5 years old | Classic literature that is decades old |
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Identify convergent cultural practices across unrelated heritages.
- 02Distinguish a shared practice from a shared cause of that practice.
- 03Translate belief systems into their consequences for clinical delivery.
- 04Apply a source-recency constraint in a field with influential older literature.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
What the 600-word paper has to contain
- 01A discussion of similarities between Appalachian and Arab heritage beliefs about healthcare delivery.
- 02An account of how religion or folk belief influences delivery in each heritage.
- 03Approximately 600 words, around two pages.
- 04APA format, Word document, Arial 12.
- 05At least two evidence-based references published within the last five years.
Three convergences and what they change in practice
Framing the comparison
State that the paper looks for convergence between two unrelated heritages and why that is notable.
Family as the unit of decision
Show how collective decision-making operates in both heritages and what it changes.
Faith as an explanatory framework
Examine how religious meaning attaches to illness and recovery in both traditions.
Traditional healing alongside formal care
Describe informal and folk practice in each heritage and its place in the care pathway.
Implications for delivery
Draw the practice consequences together for a clinician meeting patients from either heritage.
Finding current sources in a field with older classics
Recommended databases
- PubMed and PubMed Central
- CINAHL
- NCBI Bookshelf
- Recent transcultural nursing journals
Search sequence
- 1.Search each heritage separately first, then look for the overlap yourself. Searching for the comparison directly returns very little, because these two groups are rarely studied together.
- 2.Filter to the last five years before selecting your two required references, since the most cited work in this area predates that window and will not count.
- 3.Search access and social determinants for Appalachia specifically, which is where the current quantitative evidence sits and where the causal story differs from the Arab heritage material.
- 4.For Arab heritage, search clinical delivery topics — consent, modesty, gender concordance, fasting and medication — rather than culture in general, so the second question has practice-level evidence.
Transcultural and access-barrier sources
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
Cultural Religious Competence in Clinical Practice
StatPearls Publishing, via NCBI Bookshelf · 2024
The best source for the second question, because it is organised around exactly what the question asks — how religious belief bears on diet, medication, modesty and prayer schedules in clinical practice, across more than twenty-five traditions. Use it to convert belief statements into delivery consequences rather than describing what each group believes.
- 02
A social determinants of health survey in an Appalachian East Tennessee Medical Center: Initial findings and correlations with physical and emotional states of health
PLOS One · 2025
Current quantitative evidence for the Appalachian half, and comfortably within the five-year window: an average of 11.6 access barriers per patient, 54.3% reporting structural barriers to access, 60.8% with household income under $50,000. This is what supports the argument that reliance on informal care in Appalachia is substantially a response to access constraints rather than to belief alone.
- 03
Opening cultural doors: providing culturally sensitive healthcare to Arab American and American Muslim patients
American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology — Hammoud, White and Fetters · 2005
The standard reference for the Arab heritage half, and useful for its central point that the challenge extends beyond language to entire worldviews and concepts of health, illness and recovery. Note the date: it falls outside the brief's five-year rule, so use it for background and framing while sourcing your two required references from current literature.
Before the heritage paper is submitted
Common mistakes
- Writing a contrast essay when the brief asks for similarities.
- Listing beliefs without saying what changes in the clinical encounter.
- Assuming individual autonomy in consent when both heritages centre the family.
- Treating folk medicine as ignorance rather than as a system with its own transmission.
- Attributing both heritages' practices to the same underlying cause.
- Ignoring access and structural barriers as a driver in Appalachian communities.
- Citing foundational but decades-old literature toward the five-year requirement.
- Writing to the two-page figure and missing the binding 600-word count.
Submission checklist
- Similarities are the organising structure of the paper.
- At least three shared features are identified and evidenced.
- The different underlying causes of those shared features are acknowledged.
- Each belief is connected to a specific effect on care delivery.
- Consent, examination, scheduling or disclosure appear as concrete examples.
- Word count reaches approximately 600.
- At least two references are under five years old.
- APA formatting, Arial 12, submitted as a Word document.
Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.
Written by
Aaron Bishop
MA, Education
assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines
Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.
Reviewed by
Dr. Nathan Cole
PhD, Rhetoric & Composition
Argumentation and thesis development
Nathan teaches first-year composition and directs a university writing center. He reviews EssayCrackers guides for argumentative soundness and citation accuracy.