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This article analyzes the question why the Dutch patients’ health movement, specifically its branch of organizations for handicapped people, increasingly appeals to civic identity, and what consequences this has for the movement's mobilization efforts and effects. To address this question, we first analyze the meaning of ‘identity’ for patients’ organizations. In addition to an internal function (a shared identity as the basis for contact with other patients), the ‘patient identity’ also has an external function: identity movements can also produce instrumental actions. At the same time, it turns out that the specific ‘patient identity’ is being undermined through these instrumental actions, since in particular the instrumentally oriented wing of the movement insists on a broader basis for mobilization than the patient identity alone. This wing propagates citizenship as the empowering core topic, also because it seems to generate a better response in the political arena than the victim-like patient identity. This is a problematic situation. Employing a broad civic identity may appeal to some handicapped people. For other patients, however, this appeal works only in a very limited way, especially as long as citizenship does not take into consideration the differences between citizens, and as long as citizenship is defined in opposition to corporeality.

In 1920 Margaret Sanger called voluntary motherhood “the key to the temple of liberty” and noted that women were “rising in fundamental revolt” to claim their right to determine their own reproductive fate (Rothman, 2000, p. 73). Decades later Barbara Katz Rothman reflected on the social, political and legal changes produced by reproductive-rights feminists since that time. She wrote: So the reproductive-rights feminists of the 1970s won, and abortion is available – just as the reproductive-rights feminists of the 1920s won, and contraception is available. But in another sense, we did not win. We did not win, could not win, because Sanger was right. What we really wanted was the fundamental revolt, the “key to the temple of liberty.” A doctor’s fitting for a diaphragm, or a clinic appointment for an abortion, is not the revolution. It is not even a woman-centered approach to reproduction (2000, p. 79).

A community-centred approach to health called Community Wellbeing Practices (CWP) is being offered to patients at all 17 GP practices in Halton in order to respond more appropriately to patients’ social needs, which are often an underlying reason for their presentation at primary care services. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Delivered in partnership with a local social enterprise this approach is centred on the integration of community assets and non-medical community-based support provided by the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector. The core elements include community navigation, social prescribing and social action approaches.

The CWP initiative has supported more than 5,000 patients over the last four years and has evidenced demonstrable improvements in a range of health and social outcomes for patients.

The initiative has been well received by clinicians and social care professionals and has contributed to a cultural transformation in the way health and care professionals are responding to the identified needs of the community.

Using community-centred approaches in this way may help to augment clinical outcomes as well as reduce demand on over stretched public services.

Community-centred models such as the one in Halton have the potential to empower citizens to play an active role in creating healthier communities by catalysing a “people powered” social movement for health.

The CWP model in Halton is a good example of the way community-centred approaches to health can be integrated with health and care pathways to augment clinical outcomes and reduce demand on over stretched services.

The main aim of this article is to broaden the notion of strategic intent in public relations. It also develops an understanding of the social value of what can be defined as the first modern health communication campaign in Europe based on strategic intents and the development of modernity.

The study is based on both historical research and empirical material from the Norwegian tuberculosis campaign from 1889 up to 1913, when Norwegian women achieved suffrage. The campaign is analysed in the framework of modernity and social theory. The literature on lobbying and social movements is also used to develop a theoretical framework for the notion of strategic intent.

The study shows that strategic intent can be divided into two layers: (1) the implicit strategic intent is the real purpose behind the communication efforts, whereas (2) the explicit intent is found directly in the communication efforts. The explicit intent may be presented as a solution for the good of society at the right political moment, giving an organisation the possibility to mobilise for long-term social changes, in which could be the implicit intent.

The distinction between explicit and implicit strategic intent broadens our understanding on how to make long-term social changes as well as how social and political changes occur in modern societies. The article also gives a historical account of what is here defined as the first modern health communication campaign in Europe and its social value.

Health care systems all over the world are undergoing rapid and profound transformations. These changes are the result of a broad array of economic and social trends including neo-liberal economic policies that are contributing to the trend toward privatization, the commodification of health services and products, institutional restructuring (e.g., managed care) to contain costs in the context of technological advances, globalization and demographic changes such as population aging in post-industrial societies. Questions about the accessibility and quality of health care delivery in the face of persistent health disparities, growing numbers of medical errors, and new and uncertain risks posed by emerging infectious diseases, some of them drug-resistant, have also contributed to rethinking about health policy.

Purpose – This chapter presents a case for reframing medical sociology to focus on diagnosis as a pivotal category of analysis via an extended literature review of the diagnosis as a tool of medicine.

Methodology/approach – Conceptual overview.

Practical implications – By reviewing the range of social functions served by diagnosis, and the similarly wide assortment of social forces that shape diagnostic categories, this chapter pushes social scientists and theorists to consider diagnosis as a cornerstone to the understanding of health, illness, and disease.

Originality/value of paper – Building on Brown's earlier call for a sociology of diagnosis, this chapter sets forth potential parameters for this field. It defines how the study of diagnosis is dissipated across myriad areas of scholarship, including medicalization, disease theory, ethics, classification theory, and history of medicine. Extirpating diagnosis and revealing it for specific discussion provides an opportunity to study topics such as illness experiences, health social movements, and disease recognition from a different and rich perspective.

Purpose – In this chapter, I examine the ways that various trauma carriers, including social movements, self-identified survivors, professional organizations, and advocates make public claims about trauma and the PTSD diagnosis as they work to define moral and political issues.

Methodology/approach – Employing the method of social pattern analysis, I analyze a variety of narrative data pertaining to issues such as child sexual abuse, war, slavery, and genocide.

Findings – Trauma carriers engage in significant social memory work and collective identity work, define social problems, and practice social activism as they address the causes and consequences of psychological suffering. Within the context of modern diagnostic psychiatry, the PTSD diagnosis stands out as a unique narrative of social illness. The PTSD diagnosis is a powerful cultural script that various individuals and interest groups use to interpret mental health symptoms while attributing psychological consequences to social causes as opposed to problems rooted in the individual's psyche (as with psychoanalysis) or neurophysiology (as with modern diagnostic psychiatry). By implication, the social world must be “cured” for the individual to be healthy.

Originality/value of paper – I detail the unique sociocognitive implications of the PTSD diagnosis, highlighting its impact on our collective understanding of particular traumatic experiences and the shared nature of posttraumatic affect. I show the relevance of social memory studies, the more broadly conceived sociology of culture and cognition – especially as it pertains to collective identity and classification norms, the sociology of health-focused social movements, and the analysis of social problems claims-making to an emerging sociology of diagnosis.

Purpose – Recent research on the modes of patient activism has displaced older notions of patients as passive, compliant subjects of biomedical power. This chapter expands analyses of patient activism to examine the intersections between the processes of identity formation, the emergence of a new scientific field (human stem cell research), and political institutions.

Methodology – This chapter uses in-depth interviews, ethnographic techniques, and textual analyses to collect data regarding California's 2004 ballot initiative, Proposition 71, The California Stem Cell Research and Cures Act. Data were analyzed using a situational analysis approach. Situational analysis is a variant of grounded theory that organizes data in the form of maps of connections between actors and social worlds.

Findings – This chapter examines the content and significance of this event through the construction of a collective identity among supporters of Proposition 71, what I call “stem cell activists.” The construction of this collective identity serves as an important ground from which individuals and groups carve out political claims of self-representation. Stem cell activists also helped pass a controversial initiative through the efforts in publicly supporting Prop 71 and human stem cell research.

Research limitations – This research is limited in that it only examined individuals who became stem cell activists, and not individuals from whom this identity failed to gain salience. More research is needed to understand the conditions under which this identity becomes incorporated within a person's political repertoire.

Value of chapter – This chapter brings together theoretical perspectives on the symbolic aspects of identity construction and the political economy of biomedical science. This chapter will be of interest to scholars in medical sociology, science and technology studies, and social movement researchers.

In the summer of 2002, the Collective Behavior and Social Movements section of the American Sociological Association held one of its periodic workshops at the University of Notre Dame. The theme of the workshop and the title of this volume, Authority in Contention, was originally suggested by David Snow and later refined by the workshop committee. The conference theme was inspired in part by the ideas developed and published in Doug McAdam, Charles Tilly, and Sidney Tarrow’s Dynamics of Contention, and a good portion of the conference developed in reaction to the ideas presented in the book. But although the conference itself was reacting to the DOC agenda (along with just about everyone else in the social movements field at the time), the agenda was broader in scope. As important as the contentious politics agenda has become, the conference organizers wanted to take a step back and look more broadly at empirical terrain that might reflect what we collectively consider to be social movement research and theorizing. In part, this means moving beyond a state-centered view of contentious politics and toward a more open definition of what might be fruitfully examined by social movement theories – and in turn what might inform those theories even as we use them in more traditional social movement arenas. The danger of the contentious politics framework, as articulated by David Snow in his chapter on resisting the hegemony of the approach, is that much important social movement activity would be defined out or, or at least severely neglected, by contentious politics thinking and that a broader frame of mind is necessary to guide social movement scholarship.

India has been on the pathway of improvement concerning healthcare and health outcomes of its population. However, India must overcome its unique challenges and cover a long journey ahead. This mandates a need for a high-quality, contemporary and community-based health system that promises consistent and quality healthcare, is trusted and valued by all its citizens, considers the changing population needs and should be affordable and accessible.

The study examines various dimensions and elements associated with the integrated healthcare system in India and uses input, process and output structural measures.

The present paper proposes an integrated, comprehensive healthcare system in India that endorses participation from diverse stakeholders such as the government, organizations, the community and individuals who can contribute uniquely. It also focuses on defined and measurable output that can make health a topic of social movement or “Jan Andolan” and create a sustainable and integrated care system.

The study is unique as it focuses on the role of stakeholders in health care. The research emphasized the involvement of the government, community, people and organizations in developing an integrated healthcare ecosystem that includes modern technology, skilled employees, enough finance, governance, efficient delivery platforms and top-tier infrastructure. The model’s output is focused on healthcare that is inexpensive, accessible, available, accountable and user-centered. This would gradually improve everyone’s health and well-being.