The Role of Diagnosis in Health & Wellbeing: A social science perspective on the social, economic and political costs and consequences of diagnosis

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Diagnosis is central to the practice of medicine. It is common to the experience of anyone who has ever visited their GP, seen a medical specialist in a clinic, or been admitted to hospital. Diagnosis is a social, as much as it is a medical affair. By this we mean that the practices and techniques, costs and consequences of diagnosis affect the lives and experiences of practitioners, patients and carers, and also have implications for health care institutions, policy makers, managers and others. Despite this, diagnosis as a focus of social sciences has remained something that, with a few pioneering exceptions, has rarely been directly addressed as an important topic in its own right. The goal of this seminar series is to strengthen and support the further development of the emerging sociology of diagnosis. The seminars will provide a platform to bring together academics with appropriate expertise from a range of fields (including but not limited to medical sociology, science and technology studies, medical anthropology, organisational sociology, health policy, economics, bio-ethics and political debates on new social movements) to discuss the key issues that a critical sociology of diagnosis must address. Ultimately this sub-discipline should productively highlight the socio-economic costs and consequences of diagnostic practices and enable the improvement of health outcomes.In order for this new field to thrive and for health outcomes related to these social processes to improve, knowledge about the sociology of diagnosis must be disseminated beyond the social sciences and the academy. The proposed seminars will bring together academic experts and representatives from health care professions, patient organizations, and policy areas for discussions informed both by sociological knowledge and the experiences and expertise of medical professionals and service users. In order to structure these discussions and ensure the most pertinent topics are addressed, there will be five seminars in the series and each seminar will be structured around a key issue. These are:What is diagnosis? This seminar will highlight the social, economic, psychological, ethical and political factors which shape diagnostic categories, introduce new diagnoses, and change the nature of the diagnostic process.Diagnostic technologies. We will focus on how technologies create, reframe and highlight particular diagnoses and what drives the development of new technologies. We will explore how both lay and professional use of technology changes the understanding, and assessment of diagnosis and disease.Diagnosis and collective health movements. This seminar will discuss how diagnoses are contested, challenged and politicised. It will explore the different ways in which diagnoses can affect different social and cultural groups in order to understand the implications for class, age, gender, ethnicity and sexuality. We will explore what a sociology of diagnosis can learn from patients and patient groups.Practitioner and patient experiences of diagnosis. The diagnostic process is experienced by lay and professional. We will explore how diagnostic practices create or challenge territorial boundaries within and between lay and professional as well as between professions. We will consider how diagnosis is undertaken within complementary and alternative health settings.Policy and practice. What are the primary policy domains relevant to the sociology of diagnosis? In what ways do they constrain or facilitate the emergence of different forms of diagnosis?