- Title
- Defining health: how users and practitioners of Traditional, Complementary and Alternative Medicine experience health care in a remote area of Australia
- Creator
- Hastings, Aqua
- Relation
- Annual Conference of The Australian Sociological Association (TASA 2016). Proceedings of The Australian Sociological Association Conference (Melbourne 28 November - 1 December, 2016) p. 108-116
- Relation
- https://tasa.org.au/tasa-conference/2016-tasa-conference/
- Publisher
- The Australian Sociological Association (TASA)
- Resource Type
- conference paper
- Date
- 2016
- Description
- Traditional, Complementary and Alternative Medicine (TCAM) approach health care with definitions of health beyond the hegemonic 'absence of disease'. The World Health Organisation recognises the role of TCAM in improving health equity because of its cultural accessibility, especially in remote areas. Given that people in remote Australia have comparatively poor health and higher usage of TCAM this study fills a gap in the literature by increasing sociological understanding of what health means and what socio-cultural factors makes TCAM health care relevant to people living remotely. A constructionist approach and a feminist theoretical framework has been taken because this recognises the multiple determinations of people's health realities and the ways power is dispersed through health knowledge and practices. Interviews were conducted with people who use and in most cases also practice TCAM in a remote area of Central Australia, and the data analysed using thematic and narrative analysis. Emerging findings show that health is experientially constructed through the interactions that people have with factors in their social and geographic environment. Greater understanding of how people conceptualise and experience health through their use and practice of TCAM can help address health access and needs, and thereby improve health outcomes.
- Subject
- health; remoteness; Traditional, Complementary and Alternative Medicine
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1346018
- Identifier
- uon:29765
- Identifier
- ISBN:9780646964805
- Language
- eng
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