We explain why some caretakers opt for alternative medicine for the treatment of children's asthma whereas others do not. In the past 15 years, asthma care has been standardized, with clinical practice guidelines centered on advanced pharmacological regimes. Clinicians argue that with proper biomedical treatment and environmental control, asthma should be a manageable chronic disease. Yet many patients forego available pharmacological treatments for alternative medicine or complement prescribed drugs with unconventional treatments. On the basis of open-ended, in-depth qualitative interviews with 50 mothers of children with asthma, we argue that the experience with biomedical treatments, social influence in mother's network of care, concerns about adverse and long-term effects, health care providers' responsiveness to such concerns, and familiarity with alternative treatments explain why some families rely on alternative medicine and others do not.
Flaherty's cross-cultural theory purports to account for variation in the perceived passage of time. Recent events in Argentina provide an opportunity to assess the applicability of this theory to a Latin American nation. We conducted interviews with 198 persons who participated in various kinds of political activism. The respondents who felt that time had passed “quickly” emphasized an increase in governmental and personal activity. For those who said “slowly,” the focus was on suffering, unpleasant emotions, and waiting. Those who were unable to specify reported a mixture of factors associated with “quickly” or “slowly,” while those who said “synchronically” were unaffected by the turmoil in their country. These findings offer strong support for the theory in question, and they suggest that variation in the experience of time occurs not because there are different kinds of people but because people find themselves in different kinds of circumstances.
In this article we analyze notions about healthy food and the perceptions of risks related to industrialized foodstuffs within a group of young and middle-aged females and males who belong to the middle class and live in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires. Data come from eight focus groups that were carried out in 2013. The study shows that the participants of the focus group have incorporated scientific-nutritional knowledge into their conceptions of healthy food. However, few discuss the risks of industrialized food beyond the growing public attention regarding trans fats and salt content. Although organic foods are positively valued, participants object to their high cost and the location of their commercialization. We show how in their food practices, the participants of the focus groups weigh their concern about health against other priorities such as costs, convenience, aesthetics, pleasure and sociability.
En este artículo reflexionamos sobre la complejidad que presentan la conceptualización y la medición del acceso a los servicios de salud. Presentamos los modelos teóricos que habitualmente se utilizan para abordar la temática y las diferentes formas de operacionalizarlos, dando cuenta de sus implicancias para el análisis de los datos y la información obtenida. Tomamos como ejemplo la Encuesta Nacional de Factores de Riesgo realizada en Argentina en el año 2009. Mostramos que esta encuesta ofrece información importante para comprender las desigualdades en el acceso a los servicios de salud; sin embargo, observamos que la forma en que mide y analiza el acceso puede subregistrar la problemática de las barreras en la utilización de los servicios de salud, captando solamente las situaciones extremas.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.