Send message to Author

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.