Abstract

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The rise of consumerism has meant a corresponding shift in the encapsulation of responsibility for healthcare choices. Such responsibility is encapsulated in a range of actions aimed individual behaviour - lifestyle choices to prevent or ameliorate chronic conditions, screening for early detection of illness, risk reduction behaviours, and financing for one’s healthcare needs through private health insurance. Similarly, the orientation of much public health policy is towards individual behavior change – the use of nudge theory being one example. At the same time, there has been an emergence of new markets targeting health choices and in many health jurisdictions there are policy incentives to encourage responsible choices.

In this session we are calling for papers that explore issues related to the delivery of healthcare in contemporary society that may include the following:

• The changing power relations in healthcare between consumers, health professionals, the market and government;

• The rise of new theories in public health, for example, nudge theory, and associated issues with choice, risk and trust.

• Issues of privatisation and/or marketization of health care

• The proliferation of markets in a consumer age of healthcare provision.

• The social impacts of a focus on choice and individual responsibility, eg, the perpetuation of inequality.

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Session organizer(s)

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Karen Willis (AU) – is a health sociologist and qualitative researcher at Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests focus on the shaping of seemingly individual choices about health and health care by broader social forces, at a time where individual agency (conceptualized as choice) is emphasized. She has led an Australian Research Council grant on how people navigate the Australian healthcare system, with particular emphasis on choices made about private health insurance and private health care. Her current research focuses on how social interactions and social context enable people to manage chronic conditions.

 

Marit Solbjør (NO) – is a health sociologist at the Department of Social Work and Health Sciences at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. She has has undertaken research on choice on health care and has published a number of articles on women’s experiences with mammography screening. She has also done research on user involvement in mental health care, self-management for chronic conditions, the cooperation reform in Norway, and voluntary work with vulnerable elders.

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