Suchergebnisse

AbstractPublic reaction to the UK's ongoing health sector reform often results in dilution of policy‐makers' goals. Public participation in health service decision‐making is advocated in policy, but precisely how to do it and what role public opinion should have in formulating reform strategy is ambiguously described. Public opinion is formed through many influences, including media reporting. This paper examines how reconfiguration at a rural maternity unit at Caithness General Hospital in Wick, Scotland, was communicated in national and local media and considers potential implications of media communication on public participation in policy decision‐making. Content analysis of arguments for and against change revealed a high level of reporting of commentators against change in regional newspapers. Qualitative analysis identified emergent themes about how maternity service reconfiguration was portrayed. These included framing opposition between management and local people, and change drivers receiving superficial coverage. Findings suggest that media portrayal of the public role in change may promote an adversarial rather than a participative stance. More finely tuned understanding of the relationship between the reporting of change and public reaction should be attained as this could affect how planned social policy evolves into actual practice.

This paper highlights embarrassment as one of the often-ignored emotions of young people when it comes to discussing issues around sexual health. There have been many sexual health studies on knowledge, attitudes and behaviour of young people over the past two decades, but emotional aspects have been largely ignored, despite a growing literature in the sociology of emotion. A qualitative approach was adopted in the form of focus group discussions, which included questions on sex education, sexual health campaigns and formal and informal sources of sexual health information and advice. Focus groups were conducted in secondary schools in and around Edinburgh and Aberdeen as part of a four-year evaluation study of a Scottish Demonstration Project on young people's sexual health: 'Healthy Respect'. We conclude that is it important for policy makers and sexual health promoters to understand young people's notions of embarrassment. Not only are there elements of sex education that (some) young people perceive as embarrassing, they also sense embarrassment in those people providing them with sex education. Young people reported that both professionals (e.g. teachers and doctors) and their parents could be embarrassed about raising the topic of sexual health. Moreover, as one of the goals of sex education is to ensure an open and non-embarrassing attitude towards sex and sexuality, there is still a major gap between the aspirations of health educators and policy makers and the ways that young people experience such education.