The shift to prevention and health promotion is an example of how policy makers aim to rationalise and organise both health systems and patients' health practices. By applying a perspective from empirical science & technology studies (STS), based on qualitative research methods, the chapters of this book present a view behind the scenes and zoom into the micropolitics of prevention and health promotion. They analyse how patients are framed as being »at risk«, how preventative regimes shape medical practices, and what its practical consequences are in patients' everyday lives. This makes the insights of this book relevant for prevention and health promotion practitioners, public health policy-makers and researchers.
Tom Mathar is a PhD-student in the Research Cluster »Preventive Self« based at the Department of European Ethnology at Humboldt University in Berlin. His research interests lie in the field of Social Anthropology and Science & Technology Studies including telemedicine and telecare, health policy and politics, innovation in health science and technology. He teaches »Health & Social Policy« at HFH-Hamburg (University of Applied Sciences). Yvonne J.F.M. Jansen is cultural anthropologist and researcher at The Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research TNO Quality of Life, where she focuses on innovations in care and the formation and optimalisation of networks in care. She formerly was appointed as a PhD student at the Institute of Health Policy and Management of the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, where she conducted her PhD research which comprised notions from Science and Technology Studies (STS).
