Health Promotion and Prevention Programmes in Practice

... with Yvonne J.F.M. Jansen und Tom Mathar

1. »Completely unnecessary!« – Why is that not true for your book?

With the increasing expenditures and demands on healthcare, health has become a major political problem that must be managed at both the macro and the micro-level. The shift towards preventive care and health promotion is an example of how policy makers aim to rationalise and organise patient/consumer health practices. This book is therefore relevant as it presents the rationalities and implications of some of these programs by discussing range of preventive regimes currently being used for various diseases.

2. Which new perspectives are opened through your book?

The studies analyse preventive regimes as networks in their political and moral contexts, demonstrating the multiplicity of these programs by also presenting their partialities, instabilities, and situatedness. In-depth analyses of prevention initiatives based on qualitative research focus on the relational character of all elements inherent to such prevention initiatives. They strive to explain how the practices of prevention programs are shaped by all actors and actants present in the situation.

3. What's the book's possible impact on the current discourse on the topic it deals with?

The field of prevention is dominated by health scientists (e.g. epidemiologists), healthcare providers, insurance companies, etc. In contrast to their narrations, studies on the actual practice of administering health promotion and prevention programs provide insights into who is actually doing prevention and how different actors/actants determine and (re-)configure others actors' routines, activities and/or identities.

4. With which audience do you wish to discuss this book?

Since the papers are inspired by different epistemiological backgrounds within the discipline of Science & Technology Studies, the book's imagined audience are scholars coming from these disciplines. It aims to show what different approaches such as actor-network-theory, the strong programme, interactionist STS, and Foucault'ian approaches have to contribute to the debate. At the same time, however, the papers explicitly state what they contribute to the particular `practitioners' communities of practice.

5. Your book in one sentence?

This book analyses different health promotion and prevention programs in practice and discusses their wider political and moral implications.