AbstractIdentity politics – drawing upon discourses of 'equal rights' – has achieved much for queer1 people in Western countries. Despite these achievements, international research indicates considerably higher prevalence of suicide and other mental health problems for men who have sex with men (msm)2. This raises a question about the effectiveness of identity politics in the mental health arena. What does it have to offer msm who are clients of public mental health services (pmhs) and what/who does it silence? The ethnic model of identity politics emphasises similarity within identity categories. This engenders the idea that queer staff can be 'matched' with and use their similar experience born out of identity to help msm clients in pmhs. In this paper, I use data from interviews with queer staff and msm clients of pmhs in Aotearoa/New Zealand to argue that these two groups of queer people are offered different subject positions by dominant and marginalised discourses of homosexuality and mental health. I suggest that understanding this multiplicity of identities and power relations within a heteronormative context is important in considering both the potentials and limitations of identity politics for envisioning and enacting liberatory change in pmhs for msm.
In: Bulletin of the World Health Organization: the international journal of public health = Bulletin de l'Organisation Mondiale de la Santé, Band 86, Heft 11, S. 905-907
"Reviewing recent healthcare policy in the NHS, this book firmly locates the NHS in the context of the welfare state. Setting health policy in both an historical and modern context (post-1997) Carrier and Kendall weigh up the successes and failures of the National Health Service in the United Kingdom and examine the conflicts which have driven the Health Service for over fifty years. After looking at recent responses to the apparent failure of healthcare in the United Kingdom, they conclude that the NHS has successfully met the challenges it faced when founded over sixty years ago and is likely to continue to meet the changing health needs of the population.This excellent book is appropriate for a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate students studying health policy and the NHS"--
"Reviewing recent healthcare policy in the NHS, this book firmly locates the NHS in the context of the welfare state. Setting health policy in both an historical and modern context (post-1997) Carrier and Kendall weigh up the successes and failures of the National Health Service in the United Kingdom and examine the conflicts which have driven the Health Service for over fifty years. After looking at recent responses to the apparent failure of healthcare in the United Kingdom, they conclude that the NHS has successfully met the challenges it faced when founded over sixty years ago and is likely to continue to meet the changing health needs of the population. This excellent book is appropriate for a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate students studying health policy and the NHS"--
In 2003, the Swedish Parliament adopted a national public health policy that included the domain - "A more health-promoting health service". Strategies and tools are needed in the work to reorient health services. Personal health documents are documents concerning a person's health, and are owned by the individual. Several studies that have evaluated such documents indicate that they could be of interest in health-promotion work. However, there is insufficient knowledge concerning personal health documents that target adolescents, and little is known about the feasibility of such documents in a Swedish cultural context. The concept of empowerment is gaining increased interest for health services, but the associations between empowerment, self-rated health and health behaviour are sparsely studied. The overall aim of the thesis is to explore a strategy - empowerment - and a tool - personal health documents - that might facilitate the work of the public health goal of a health-promoting health service. Specific aims are to examine the feasibility of using personal health documents in health promotion; to examine professionals' experiences of working with health promotion and personal health documents; to examine the association between personal health documents and self-reported health behaviour change; and to examine the perception of empowerment in relation to self-rated health and health behaviour among adolescents. Two personal health documents that targeted adults and adolescents were developed and evaluated. Distribution to adults in different settings was compared in a cross-sectional study (n = 1 306). Adolescents received the document in school, and surveys were performed at baseline and after one year (n = 339). Practical use and attitudes by document owners were studied by questionnaires. Teachers (n = 69) answered a questionnaire, and community health nurses were interviewed (n = 12). The interviews also explored nurses' experiences of working with health promotion in general, and were analysed by qualitative methodology. Adolescents' empowerment was examined by a questionnaire (n = 1 046). Most participants reported reading in the documents; writing in the documents varied between 16% (distribution in occupational health) and 87% (adolescents). The health document was perceived as useful by 35% of the adolescents. Factors significantly related to personal usefulness were being born outside Sweden, experiencing fair treatment by teachers, being a non-smoker and having a positive school experience. Community health nurses were striving for a balance of being a doer of practical, disease-oriented tasks and a health-promotion communicator. The structural organisation in health care centres was important for their work with health promotion and the health document. Teachers were generally in favour of continued work with the document. In different settings, between 10% and 26% of adults reported changes in their health situations as a result of reading the booklet. Self-reported changes in health situations were less likely using postal distribution, and there were no significant differences between the other types of distribution. Adolescents with low empowerment scores reported poorer self-rated health and more risk-taking behaviours such as smoking and binge drinking. To conclude, personal health documents are feasible to use in different settings. Health promotion in health services needs active support from leaders as well as adequate support systems. Findings suggest that personal health documents can be tools for promoting self-reported lifestyle changes among adults in different settings. There is a close relation among adolescents between low empowerment in the domain of health, low self-rated health and health behaviours such as binge drinking and smoking.
The main goal of this research is to explore the organizational climate perceived by administrative and healthcare personnel working in Spanish healthcare services, analyzing the differences according to their health specialization, sex, age and professional status. The sample was made up of 3,787 individuals working in the administrative and healthcare services of the Public Health System of the Principality of Asturias, 88.7 % were working in specialist care and 11.3 % in primary care. Mean age was 51.88 (standard deviation of 6.28); 79.9 % were women and 20.1 % men. The organizational climate was assessed with the CLIOR scale. The organizational climate perceived is moderately positive, with a global mean of 3.03 on a scale of 1 to 5 points. The differences are statistically significant (p < .01) according to specialty, age and profession. A better working climate is perceived in primary care than in specialist care, and among older as compared to younger workers. The results indicate that the working climate perceived by administration and services staff employees in the Spanish healthcare context is moderately positive, with a better perceived climate in primary care than in specialist care.
BACKGROUND: Our aim, as part of the collaborative study SPHERE (Strengthening Public Health Research in Europe), was to describe public health publications in the French language according to health needs and public health functions. METHOD: All articles published in six French public health journals, and one French/English language Canadian journal, over the period 1995-2004, were retrieved from three electronic databases. Original research articles were indexed by hand according to one main domain of health need, based on Global Burden of Disease categories, and into one of four public health functions. RESULTS: After removing duplicates, 3984 original research articles were identified. Only 51% could be allocated to a health needs code. Of these, 71% were about non-communicable diseases, 25% communicable, maternal and perinatal conditions and 5% injuries. This compared only moderately with the global burden of disease for France (84, 5 and 11%, respectively). The other articles addressed health determinants, such as behavioural or environmental exposures, or a methodological issue. Ninety-two percent of the articles could be assigned a public health function code. Health monitoring and health services research accounted for 80% of references from French journals. Only 9% of articles from French journals were related to prevention, which was lower than that in the Canadian journal (17%). Only 1% of articles dealt with legislation. CONCLUSION: The distribution of articles in French public health journals broadly follows the distribution of health needs. History and data availability may explain the extra research focus on communicable diseases and maternal and child health research. Injuries, and prevention, are topics which appear to be under-represented in French language journals.
BACKGROUND: Our aim, as part of the collaborative study SPHERE (Strengthening Public Health Research in Europe), was to describe public health publications in the French language according to health needs and public health functions. METHOD: All articles published in six French public health journals, and one French/English language Canadian journal, over the period 1995-2004, were retrieved from three electronic databases. Original research articles were indexed by hand according to one main domain of health need, based on Global Burden of Disease categories, and into one of four public health functions. RESULTS: After removing duplicates, 3984 original research articles were identified. Only 51% could be allocated to a health needs code. Of these, 71% were about non-communicable diseases, 25% communicable, maternal and perinatal conditions and 5% injuries. This compared only moderately with the global burden of disease for France (84, 5 and 11%, respectively). The other articles addressed health determinants, such as behavioural or environmental exposures, or a methodological issue. Ninety-two percent of the articles could be assigned a public health function code. Health monitoring and health services research accounted for 80% of references from French journals. Only 9% of articles from French journals were related to prevention, which was lower than that in the Canadian journal (17%). Only 1% of articles dealt with legislation. CONCLUSION: The distribution of articles in French public health journals broadly follows the distribution of health needs. History and data availability may explain the extra research focus on communicable diseases and maternal and child health research. Injuries, and prevention, are topics which appear to be under-represented in French language journals.
