Mediating Health Information: The Go-Betweens in a Changing Socio-Technical Landscape

by N. Wathen (Editor), S. Wyatt (Editor), R. Harris (Editor)

Overview

Welcome or not, most citizens in Western countries are unable to go through a day without receiving a dose of health information. This book examines the ways in which ordinary people locate and digest the amount of health information available today, focusing on the unexplored 'middle' place of human and technical mediators.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781349299386
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	01/01/2008
Series:	Health, Technology and Society
Edition description:	1st ed. 2008
Pages:	218
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

NADINE WATHEN is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario. She holds a Canadian Institutes of Health Research New Investigator Award to support her research, which includes: women's health, decision making, intervention research in the area of violence against women, translation and mobilization of research evidence to policy and practice, and projects on health information seeking and use.

SALLY WYATT is Professor of Digital Cultures in Development at Maastrict University, The Netherlands, and a Senior Research Fellow with the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her research focuses on the relationship between technological and social change, especially on issues of social exclusion and inequality.

ROMA HARRIS is Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario, Canada. Currently, her work focuses on health information-seeking and she is leading the 'Rural HIV/AIDS Information Network Project' funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1: The Go-Betweens: Health, Technology and Info(r)mediation. Sally Wyatt, Roma Harris and, Nadine Wathen CHAPTER 2: 'Everybody's Talking at Me': Situating the Client in the Info(r)mediary Work of the Health Professions. Leslie Bella, Roma Harris, Debbie Chavez, Jana Fear and Penny Gill CHAPTER 3: Health Intermediaries? Positioning the Public Library in E-Health Discourse. Flis Henwood, Roma Harris, Samantha Burdett and Audrey Marshal CHAPTER 4: To Filter or Not to Filter: Legal and Ethical Aspects of Librarians' Use of Internet Filtering Techniques. Elaine Gibson and Jan Sutherland CHAPTER 5: Invisible Logic: The Role of Software as an Information Intermediary in Health Care. Ellen Balka and Arsalan Butt CHAPTER 6: Personalized Narrative Diagnostic Imaging: Can it Mediate Patient-System Dialogue? Peter Pennefather and West Suhanic CHAPTER 7: Using the Internet as a Health Intermediary: Providing Information and Services to Marginalized Sexual Communities. T.C. Sanders CHAPTER 8: Between the Clinic and the Community: Pathways for an Emerging E-Health Policy in the Remote First Nations of Northwestern Ontario. Adam Fiser and Robert Luke CHAPTER 9: We're All Out there Busting Our Guts, Trying to Do the Best that We Can for Our People': Health Intermediaries in the Australian Indigenous Communities. Lyn Simpson, Michelle Hall and Susan Leggett CHAPTER 10: Helpers, Gatekeepers and the Well-Intentioned: The Mixed Blessings of HIV/AIDS Info(r)mediation in Rural Canada. Roma Harris, Tiffany Veinot, Leslie Bella, Irving Rootman and Judith Krajnak CHAPTER 11: Reflections on the Middle Space. Nadine Wathen, Roma Harris and Sally Wyatt.

Editorial Reviews

'[A] good book...there is plenty here that will be of interest to those involved in making policy and practice decisions in the provision of health care and health information support'. - Sociology of Health and Illness

From the Publisher