Mexican American women's pathways to health.

Self-care represents the bulk of all healthcare and is the first therapeutic mode employed by most people in the lay health arena regardless of cultural affiliation. The purpose of this article is to present a schema describing Mexican American (MA) women's pathways to health, including self-care, via the lay/popular, folk, and professional healthcare arenas. The schema is based on a naturalistic study of MA women in the Texas Rio Grande Valley using Kleinman's cultural model of healthcare systems. This schema illustrates MA similarities to mainstream groups.