Research Project - The cultures of action of health advocacy organisations in Ireland

Like elsewhere, in recent decades in Ireland there has been an upsurge of collective action mobilised around health issues. These mobilisations have centred around diverse causes, including the quality of healthcare services for particular groups of ?patients?, controversies arising from harmful biomedical interventions, struggles to redefine certain health conditions, and calls for more and different kinds of biomedical research. While some of these organisations have a high public profile, little is known about health advocacy organisations in general in Ireland. Why and how have they proliferated? What are their relationships with other ?players? in the health field? What do they do? What do they say about health and illness and other matters? What are their effects? This study, which is funded by the Royal Irish Academy?s Third Sector Research Programme, begins to address these questions. It aims to shed light on the origins of these organisations, their structures and network links, their relationships with biomedicine, and their contributions to extending or challenging biomedical frames of understanding health and illness. In a global context in which corporate - especially pharmaceutical industry - sponsorship is increasingly (and controversially) a feature of health advocacy organisations, the study focuses particularly on Irish health advocacy organisations? modes of engagement with pharmaceutical corporations.  Central questions addressed by the study are ? how do Irish health advocacy organisations interact with the pharmaceutical industry and how can variations in such interactions be explained?

For further information, contact Orla O?Donovan o.odonovan@ucc.ie