Networks of knowledge or just old wives' tales? A diary-based analysis of women's self-care practices and everyday lay expertise

Impact Factor:1.137 | Ranking:21/36 in Social Sciences, Biomedical | 81/136 in Public, Environmental & Occupational Health | 5-Year Impact Factor:1.396Source:2012 Journal Citation Reports® (Thomson Reuters, 2013)
Alex Broom a.broom{at}uq.edu.au

The University of Queensland, AustraliaCarla Meurk

The University of Queensland, AustraliaJon Adams

University of Technology Sydney, AustraliaDavid Sibbritt

University of Technology Sydney, AustraliaComplementary and alternative medicine is increasingly popular in Australia and particularly among women. While existing research provides some understanding of women’s engagement with complementary and alternative medicine and biomedicine, there has been comparatively little examination of the day-to-day character of their experiences. In this study, we utilise solicited diaries with women aged 60–65 years drawn from the 1946–1951 cohort of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health to capture the temporal dimension of their therapeutic engagement. Focusing on 30 active complementary and alternative medicine users, we explore women’s experiences of managing their health, illness and well-being over a 1-month period. The themes that emerge from their diaries illustrate the day-to-day enactment of lay expertise through informal knowledge networks, practices of self-trialling and experimentation and the moralities underpinning self-care. The diaries provide unprecedented temporal insight into the (often problematic) enactment of lay expertise at the nexus of complementary and alternative medicine and biomedicine. They also point to the value of longitudinal techniques of data collection for augmenting more traditional sociological ways of exploring therapeutic pluralism.

© 2013 SAGE Publications. Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC

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High Priority Behaviour and Social Research Networks

The ESRC and National Institute on Aging (NIA) are pleased to announce a joint call for networks. This call covers a number of thematic areas, the ESRC will consider co-funding applications which involve or are led by UK partners in the following areas:

Epigenetics: Advance research from a life course perspective that elucidates how epigenetic processes translate the effects of social environments into behavioural or behaviourally mediated outcomes that may persist throughout life into middle and late adulthood. This builds on the ESRC/BBSRC International Symposium on EpigeneticsReversibility: Assessing the prospects for mid-late life reversibility of phenotypes associated with early life adversity and subsequent later life health and socioeconomic disparities.Valuing Health Research: Facilitate a network to study the production of biomedical and behavioral science research and its impact on health, especially healthy aging, and the economy.

Full details of the call for Networks is available on the NIA website. To be eligible for ESRC co-funding, applications must include a social science UK component, including one or more UK Investigators. For further information on what constitutes a 'UK component' see the FAQ document.

If you have an interest in the area of reversibility then you may also be interested in a separate ESRC/NIA call on Mid-life Reversibility of Early-established Biobehavioural Risk Factors.

ESRC and NIA funding for networks in the above areas will provide infrastructure support for advancing the development of interdisciplinary areas of behavioural and social research of relevance to ageing. Ageing-relevant research is that which addresses issues of importance to the well-being and health of either mid-life or older adults, and can include data spanning the entire life course.

The infrastructure support will facilitate research networks through meetings, conferences, small scale pilots, training, and dissemination so that they can develop to the point where work in this area can be supported through standard research funding mechanisms. Development of research networks is critical to advance the science in high priority emerging areas, where integration across studies, disciplines and institutions is required.

BBSRC are co-funding this call, further information can also be found on their website:

Note: The NIH Guide notice providing detailed Guidance on Resumption of NIH Extramural Activities Following the Recent Lapse in Appropriations has just been published. The receipt date for the Networks (R24) RFA will be 17.00, 1 November your local time.

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