The Mediatization of Care

This paper will explore the implications for peer-to-peer health interventions of two developments in modern Western societies; the increasing status of the media as a site for gaining governmental legitimacy (Schillemanns, 2012) and a neoliberal “logic of choice” in health care, focusing on citizens’ individual risk and responsibilities in pursuing “factual” health (Mol, 2008). The practice of peer-to-peer health intervention may, as opposed to the logic of choice, be guided by a “logic of care” (Mol, 2008) , defined as a professional way of doing that attunes into the everyday life of the patient and sees health targets as negotiable values – as opposed to predefined solutions and demands of individual responsibility and rational choice (Mol, 2008).

With this paper, we wish to point to the dilemmas that may arise in the governmental facilitation and management of peer-to-peer interventions in health care defined partly by a democratization of health expertise and the abovementioned logic of care, when – at the same time - there is an experienced need of gaining public legitimacy and status via linking to the agendas of the media and broader culture that promote an individualized, risk aware health culture (Christensen, 2015). These dilemmas present themselves on both micro, mezzo and macro levels of policy and practice.

The discussions will draw on empirical data from a peer-to-peer programme for vulnerable men in Copenhagen of ethnic Danish and ethnic minority background, initiated by the Municipality of Copenhagen in February 2016. The overall aim of this programme is to reduce inequality in health by means of a peer-to-peer approach; a trained “peer-corps” of men will seek to reach men at high risk of diabetes and other chronic diseases and with little contact with the healthcare system (age 45+, single, unemployed, short or no education) improving their social network and creating social communities based on a (healthier) lifestyle.