Copyright (c) 2013 Providence College All rights reserved. http://digitalcommons.providence.edu/auchs/2012/panelb2 Recent Events in Determinants of Health: Lifestyle and Environment en-us Wed, 15 May 2013 17:53:47 PDT 3600 http://digitalcommons.providence.edu/auchs/2012/panelb2/2 http://digitalcommons.providence.edu/auchs/2012/panelb2/2 Sat, 31 Mar 2012 11:30:00 PDT Asthma is one of the leading chronic diseases in children 17 years of age and under with nine million American children suffering from it. Previous studies to understand causal factors of disease including asthma tend to focus on the individual and sociocultural characteristics but there is little to no research using neighborhood characteristics, a factor that does influence health. Research shows that other community‐level environmental factors like collective efficacy, community structural factors, and neighborhood safety can affect a persons’ psychosocial well-being, and in turn increase morbidity. For this reason, researchers suggest that the need to understand asthma and its associated risk factors within the social and neighborhood contexts. This study examines if the neighborhood in which a child lives influences the child’s likelihood of having asthma.

]]> Elizabeth Adejuyigbe http://digitalcommons.providence.edu/auchs/2012/panelb2/1 http://digitalcommons.providence.edu/auchs/2012/panelb2/1 Sat, 31 Mar 2012 11:30:00 PDT This paper examines the necessary identity reconstruction for chronic pain patients through the use of illness narratives. The biographical interruption of a chronic illness, partnered with the patients’ inability to discuss embodiment and pain wholly (because language failures to capture the essence of pain and suffering) creates a devastating chasm between the world of the healthy and the world of the sick. Psychosomatic pain, and illnesses without diagnosis, are all the more divisive conditions, because these factors rob the patient further, disallowing them from constructing even an illness identity. Utilizing published patient interviews, sociological and anthropological texts, as well as illness narratives from authors such as Joan Didion, the first half of this paper explores the discourse surrounding chronic pain, reconciling it with the author’s own experience as a chronic pain patient. The second half of the paper includes interviews conducted by the author, and a discussion of the relationship between these illness narratives and the sociological expectations of the chronically ill. Through these interviews, texts, and narratives, the author explores the implications of chronic pain, which are unquantifiable. Chronic pain is a condition unto itself because it expands beyond the body, problematizing the lives of its victims, and requiring a revision of their identities. From these interviews, it is evident that illness narratives are powerful not because of the specifics of a patient’s pain, but due to the life trajectory interrupted by said pain. Ask chronic pain patients to tell you about their pain and they instead tell you about their lives—ruined vacations, lost friendships—“pain environed in a concrete world,” (Kleinman, 1988).

]]> Gabriela Harris