Paper long abstract:

Medical anthropologists are asked to elaborate research projects that follow up on clinical research when the results point to the need for preventive measures and therapeutic education of patients.

I will present the example of a request submitted to me by the internal medicine and pneumology departments, in liaison with an "asthma school" in Brest. I was first asked to set up a programme of therapeutic education for patients, and then to construct a research project on the prevention of thromboembolic disease in the first-degree relatives of patients with a history of an idiopathic episode, and therefore a genetic risk. This project is conducted with hospital physicians. It faces various challenges. It has to show how anthropology can bring a specific viewpoint to the issue at hand. It faces a methodological challenge, because our project use illnesses narratives and systemic carts. And lastly has a practical challenge, because the legitimacy of the anthropologist's approach is validated only by the results obtained in terms of effectiveness.