Researching Trust and Health

There is currently a lively debate ongoing in society about the nature of trust and the conditions necessary to establish and sustain it. Given the role of trust in bridging uncertainty, it is perhaps not surprising that as our consciousness of risk has increased, the role and nature of trust in social practices has come under growing scrutiny. These developments are particularly relevant to health because participation in health practices is arguably based on and engendered through trust. There is thus a need for empirically based research, which intelligently unravels this complexity to support all stakeholders in the health arena. This multidisciplinary volume of work addresses this gap by contributing substantively to the exploration of trust in the experience, practice and organization of health. It offers an overview of recent scholarship, based on empirical research, which explores the significance of trust in relation to key health-related issues. At the same time, this text examines conceptual themes in relation to trust more generally, including the relationship between trust and auditing, consent, expert knowledges and social capital.

About the Author

Dr Julie Brownlie is a lecturer in sociology at Stirling University. Her research interests are in the sociology of the body, childhood and trust and in sociological explorations of therapeutic practices.

Dr. Alexandra Greene is a Senior Research Fellow in Medical Anthropology in the School of Medicine at the University of Aberdeen. Her research interests are in chronic illness, patient-centred care and concordance, with a particular focus on the experiences and perceptions of and interactions between young people, the family and health care professionals.

Alexandra Howson, M.A., Ph.D. has taught and researched sociology at several universities in Scotland, where her interests focused on overlapping fields of the body, gender and health. She has published widely in these areas and has also written two books – The Body in Society (Polity, 2003) and Embodying Gender (Sage, 2005). She is currently an independent Research Consultant in Northern California.