Health 

About: Health is an academic journal published by SAGE Publishing. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Health care & Population. It has an ISSN identifier of 1363-4593. Over the lifetime, 3365 publications have been published receiving 41527 citations. The journal is also known as: Health :.

Health at a Glance: Europe 2010

Abstract: This special edition of Health at a Glance focuses on health issues across the 27 European Union member states, three European Free Trade Association countries (Iceland, Norway and Switzerland) and Turkey. It gives readers a better understanding of the factors that affect the health of populations and the performance of health systems in these countries.Its 42 indicators present comparable data covering a wide range of topics, including health status, risk factors, health workforce and health expenditure. Each indicator in the book is presented in a user-friendly format, consisting of charts illustrating variations across countries and over time, brief descriptive analyses highlighting the major findings conveyed by the data, and a methodological box on the definition of the indicators and any limitations in data comparability. An annex provides additional information on the demographic and economic context within which health systems operate. This publication is the result of collaboration between the OECD and the European Commission, with the help of national data correspondents from the 31 countries.

Health as a meaningful social practice

Abstract: The pursuit of health has become a highly valued activity in modern and contemporary life, commanding enormous resources and generating an expansive professionalization and commercialization along with attendant goods, services and knowledge. Health has also become a focal, signifying practice. As a ‘key word’, health is constructed in relation to social structures and experience and systematically articulated with other meanings and practices. Although the cogency of health as a practical concept is largely a product of the enormous influence of modern medicine, medical conceptions have never been able to contain the irrepressible proliferation of meanings associated with health. The meaningful - and ideological - practices of health can be illustrated by comparing three periods in American culture: (1) the late 19th and early 20th century; (2) the 1970s and 1980s; and (3) the first years of the 21st century.

Stem Cells, Tissue Cultures and the Production of Biovalue:

Abstract: This article examines some of the social and philosophical implications of stem cell technologies. Stem cell technologies promise to transform the way that healthy tissues for transplant are sourced and circulated; from a social economy in which citizens donate whole organs to others, to one in which embryos are a major source of therapeutic tissues. This article considers the transformations in concepts of health, bodily relationships and social indebtedness that such a shift might entail. Using the concept of biovalue, this article describes the ways embryos are biologically engineered to act as tissue sources, and considers the relationship between biovalue, health and capital value. It discusses the effects stem cell technologies may have on concepts of the healthy body, particularly on the temporality of ageing, and on understandings of the human more generally.

Disturbing Notions of Chronic Illness and Individual Responsibility: Towards a Genealogy of Morals

Abstract: This article seeks to demonstrate that chronic illness is increasingly being viewed as culpability in the face of known risks, an instance of moral failure that requires the intervention of a range of political technologies. I argue that, in many western nations, it is becoming less acceptable to enter and remain in a physically incapacitated state: it clashes too uncomfortably with the image of the ‘good citizen’ as someone who actively participates in social and economic life, makes rational choices and is independent, self-reliant and responsible. By engaging in a genealogical analysis of chronic illness and individual responsibility, exploring how they are placed within the framework of contemporary ‘risk-society’, employing the insights derived from recent governmentality studies and developing a case study based on the current Australian experience with health promotion and welfare reform, I investigate the ways in which the concepts of health and illness are currently being deployed as tools of ‘government’.

Illness and Internet empowerment: writing and reading breast cancer in cyberspace.

Abstract: The Internet is now a site where women with breast cancer both read and write about the illness, and in doing so negotiate identity and definitions of situation in disembodied space. Cyberspace has been imagined as a liberatory realm where women can transgress gender roles, invent selves and create new forms of knowledge. This study explores the personal web pages of women with breast cancer with an interest in exploring the issue of 'cyber-agency' or empowerment in cyberspace. I suggest here that women's web pages might offer potentially critical opportunities for women's knowledge-making in relation to what are often highly political aspects of the body, gender and illness. However, the Internet is not an inherently empowering technology, and it can be a medium for affirming norms of femininity, consumerism, individualism and other powerful social messages.