Historical perspectives on the development of health systems modeling in medical anthropology.

The call for macro health systems models which emerged in medical anthropology in the mid-1970s from the field's most respected thinkers has a deep theoretical history and can also be related to theoretical developments in sociology, clinical medicine and international public health. The trends leading to a recognition of the need for modeling by medical anthropologists have been the source of some of medical anthropology's limitations and weaknesses as well, especially the failure to fulfill the field's promise as a biocultural bridge for the parent discipline.