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Introduction women with a raised BMI are more likely to gain excessive weight in pregnancy compared to women with a BMI in the normal range. Recent behaviour change interventions have had moderate to no influence on GWG, and no effect on other perinatal outcomes. Evidence is required regarding the social and cultural contexts of weight and pregnancy. No studies to date have included the views of partners. Aims to explore the experiences, attitudes and health-related behaviours of pregnant women with a BMI >40 kg/m 2 ; and to identify the factors and considerations which shape their beliefs, experiences and behaviours, and how these may change during and after pregnancy. 2. To determine the impact, if any, of the beliefs and attitudes of significant members of the women's families and social networks upon the women's experiences, attitudes and health-related behaviours in relation to weight and pregnancy Methods this was a prospective serial interview study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 pregnant women with a BMI >40 kg/m 2 , during pregnancy and after birth, and once with 7 partners (all male) of women. Interview questions were designed to be appropriately but flexibly framed, in order to explore and gather data on participants' everyday life, lifestyles, views, experiences, relationships and behaviours, focussing more specifically on beliefs about health, pregnancy, weight and diet. Thematic content analysis was used to formally analyse and unearth patterns in the data. Findings the findings can be grouped into six interrelated themes: the complexities of weight histories and relationships with food; resisting risk together; resisting stigma together; pregnancy as a 'pause';receiving dietary advice; postnatal intentions. These themes are interrelated due to the 'spoiled identity' (Goffman, 1963) that the large body represents in western culture and related stigma. Conclusion and implications this study provides evidence that there exist deeply ingrained social and cultural beliefs among women and in particular their partners, regarding pregnancy diet and weight gain. Further, this study provides evidence that male partners may resist stigmatised risk on behalf of a pregnant partner. All women (and several men) expressed an intention to adopt healthy behaviours and lose weight once their baby was born. Further evidence is required regarding the means by which women who experience stigmatised risk during pregnancy, and their partners, might be engaged and receptive to health advice. Models which draw on ideals of relationship-centred care, and selfefficacy via open discussion with women and families, engaging women and partners by providing them with an opportunity to talk about their beliefs and concerns, could be explored to inform future research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The numbers of young people smoking in the United Kingdom are high but they do not all turn into regular smokers. Young people go through various social, economic and job changes between the ages of 15 to 17 and becoming a regular smoker is linked to these changes. Friendship groups and the use of drugs and alcohol are important factors for both girls and boys. Smokers said they did it when with friends or when they were drinking alcohol. Health promotions need to realise that smoking is an activity with complex social triggers.

Children''s differing socio-economic, cultural and familial circumstances and experiences are part of the pathways implicated in health and illness in adulthood. However, in the existing, mainly survey based, work children''s own voices tend to be absent and adult-defined data about health and illness accumulated. Little is known about the social and cultural processes, in children''s very different childhoods, which underpin and ultimately constitute these epidemiological findings. This paper reports findings from a qualitative study examining the socio-economic and cultural contexts of children''s lifestyles and the production of inequalities in health, carried out in a large Scottish city. Two rounds of semi-structured interviews, using a range of child-friendly techniques (photographs, drawings, vignettes), were carried out with 35 girls and boys aged 9–12 years living in two contrasting but contiguous areas, one relatively advantaged and one relatively disadvantaged. Thirty of their parents were also interviewed and community profiling and observational work undertaken. Children and parents described often starkly contrasting lives and opportunities, regularly involving material differences. However, children appeared to locate inequalities as much in relationships and social life as in material concerns; in this their direct experiences of relationships and unfairness were central to their making sense of inequality and its impact on health. Although children from both areas highlighted several different inequalities, including those related to material resources, they also spoke of the importance of control over their life world; of care and love particularly from parents; of friendship and acceptance by their peer group. Many children challenged straightforward causal explanations for future ill-health, privileging some explanations, such as psychological or lifestyle factors. The accounts of children from both areas displayed considerable resilience to and downplaying of the effects of both relationship and material inequalities; also showing how familial and personal challenges, such as bullying, divorce, learning difficulties, cut across structurally based differences. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Presents the results of a study conducted on health related behavior changes in young persons in Scotland pertaining to their transition from school to further education, training or employment. Day-time occupations of the study participants in November 1995; Statistical information pertaining to smoking and the alcohol consumption by respondents; What the results of the study suggest.

The use of ‘brain training’ games is often regarded as relating to wider ideals of self-improvement and youthfulness. Hence, use is intertwined with discourses of ‘active’ ageing. This paper analyzes how the use and users of brain training games were configured in the UK media, from 2005 to 2015, and examines how notions of active ageing relate to these representations. Game users were rarely constructed solely as gamers, and were more often presented as prudent individuals focused on a serious goal. This configuration related to assumed and enjoined motivations for brain training; specifically, users were commonly framed as seeking to enhance cognition and limit/delay cognitive decline. Scientific evidence about brain training was often deployed to explain how games might work; sometimes, however, it was used to undermine the utility of games and assert the significance and cognitive health-benefits of other activities. A minority of texts explicitly critiqued ideals of self-improvement, arguing that game playing was important for its own sake. Yet, even the pleasure associated with gaming was occasionally instrumentalized as a mechanism for ensuring prudent life choices. The analysis casts fresh light on how debates around health, ageing, and science correspond to configurations of technology uses and users. It presents evidence of the widespread cultural circulation of enjoiners regarding self-care and healthy ageing within British society. However, the paper also provides indications of the limits to such imperatives: discourses of pleasure co-exist with and perhaps supplant logics of prudence in (accounts of) practices ostensibly aimed at ageing ‘well’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In recent years, there has been a rise in the creation of DNA databases promising a range of health benefits to individuals and populations. This development has been accompanied by an interest in, and concern for the ethical, legal and social aspects of such collections. In terms of policy solutions, much of the focus of these debates has been on issues of consent, confidentiality and research governance. However, there are broader concerns, such as those associated with commercialisation, which cannot be adequately addressed by these foci. In this article, we focus on the health–wealth benefits that DNA databases promise by considering the views of 10 focus groups on Generation Scotland, Scotland''s first national genetic database. As in previous studies, our qualitative research on public/s and stakeholders’ views of DNA databases show the prospect of utilising donated samples and information derived for wealth-related ends (i.e. for private profit), irrespective of whether there is an associated health-related benefit, arouses considerable reaction. While health–wealth benefits are not mutually exclusive ideals, the tendency has been to cast ‘public’ benefits as exclusively health-related, while ‘private’ commercial benefits for funders and/or researchers are held out as a necessary pay-off. We argue for a less polarised approach that reconsiders what is meant by ‘public benefits’ and questions the exclusivity of commercial interests. We believe accommodation can be achieved via the mobilisation of a grass roots solution known as ‘benefit-sharing’ or a ‘profit pay-off’. We propose a sociologically informed model that has a pragmatic, legal framework, which responds seriously to public concerns. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The introduction in March 2006 of legislation banning smoking in public places in Scotland raised concerns that smokers would smoke more at home and so increase the exposure of those living with them to tobacco smoke. Drawing on interviews from two qualitative studies conducted after the implementation of the legislation, this article uses a gendered analysis to explore where and why smokers, who lived with non-smokers including children, continued to smoke in their homes. Although very few people attributed any increased home smoking to being a direct consequence of the legislation, many who already smoked there continued, and most women reported little or no disruption to their home smoking post-legislation. Also, because of the changing social environment of smoking, and other life circumstances, a minority of women had increased their levels of home smoking. Compared to the men in these studies, women, particularly those who didn’t work outside the home, had restricted social lives and thus were less likely to have smoked in public places before the legislation and spent more time socialising in the homes of other people. In addition, women with children, including women who worked outside their homes, were more likely to spend sustained periods of time caring for children compared to fathers, who were more likely to leave the home to work or socialise. Although home smoking was linked to gendered caring responsibilities, other issues associated with being a smoker also meant that many women smokers chose to keep smoking in their homes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Social scientific work has considered the promise of genomic medicine to transform healthcare by personalising treatment. However, little qualitative research attends to already well-established molecular techniques in routine care. In this article we consider women's experiences of routine breast cancer diagnosis in the UK NHS. We attend to patient accounts of the techniques used to subtype breast cancer and guide individual treatment. We introduce the concept of 'diagnostic layering' to make sense of how the range of clinical techniques used to classify breast cancer shape patient experiences of diagnosis. The process of diagnostic layering, whereby various levels of diagnostic information are received by patients over time, can render diagnosis as incomplete and subject to change. In the example of early breast cancer, progressive layers of diagnostic information are closely tied to chemotherapy recommendations. In recent years a genomic test, gene expression profiling, has become introduced into routine care. Because gene expression profiling could indicate a treatment recommendation where standard tools had failed, the technique could represent a 'final layer' of diagnosis for some patients. However, the test could also invalidate previous understandings of the cancer, require additional interpretation and further prolong the diagnostic process. This research contributes to the sociology of diagnosis by outlining how practices of cancer subtyping shape patient experiences of breast cancer. We add to social scientific work attending to the complexities of molecular and genomic techniques by considering the blurring of diagnostic and therapeutic activities from a patient perspective. • Molecular techniques are embedded within contemporary UK breast cancer care. • Routine diagnostic practices 'split' breast cancer into subtypes. • The diversity of diagnostic techniques can render diagnosis both partial and subject to change. • We capture these experiences from a patient perspective with the concept of 'diagnostic layering'. • Gene expression profiling could finalise, but also prolong, diagnostic processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper scrutinises how AI and robotic technologies are transforming the relationships between people and machines in new affective, embodied and relational ways. Through investigating what it means to exist as human 'in relation' to AI across health and care contexts, we aim to make three main contributions. (1) We start by highlighting the complexities of philosophical issues surrounding the concepts of "artificial intelligence" and "ethical machines." (2) We outline some potential challenges and opportunities that the creation of such technologies may bring in the health and care settings. We focus on AI applications that interface with health and care via examples where AI is explicitly designed as an 'augmenting' technology that can overcome human bodily and cognitive as well as socio-economic constraints. We focus on three dimensions of 'intelligence' - physical, interpretive, and emotional - using the examples of robotic surgery, digital pathology, and robot caregivers, respectively. Through investigating these areas, we interrogate the social context and implications of human-technology interaction in the interrelational sphere of care practice. (3) We argue, in conclusion, that there is a need for an interdisciplinary mode of theorising 'intelligence' as relational and affective in ways that can accommodate the fragmentation of both conceptual and material boundaries between human and AI, and human and machine. Our aim in investigating these sociological, philosophical and ethical questions is primarily to explore the relationship between affect, relationality and 'intelligence,' the intersection and integration of 'human' and 'artificial' intelligence, through an examination of how AI is used across different dimensions of intelligence. This allows us to scrutinise how 'intelligence' is ultimately conveyed, understood and (technologically or algorithmically) configured in practice through emerging relationships that go beyond the conceptual divisions between humans and machines, and humans vis-à-vis artificial intelligence-based technologies. • Challenges and opportunities of artificial intelligence in health and care. • Conceptual issues surrounding AI, ethical machines and the human-machine boundary. • Dimensions of AI in health: robotic surgery, digital pathology, robot caregivers. • Interdisciplinary mode of theorising 'intelligence' as relational and affective. • Intersection and integration of 'human' and 'artificial' intelligence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new generation of adaptive, multi-arm clinical trials has been developed in cancer research including those offering experimental treatments to patients based on the genomic analysis of their cancer. Depending on the molecular changes found in patients' cancer cells, it is anticipated that targeted and personalised therapies will be made available for those who have reached the end of standard treatment options, potentially extending survival time. Results from these trials are also expected to advance genomic knowledge for patients in the future. Drawing on data from a qualitative study of one such trial in the UK, comprising observations of out-patient clinic appointments, out-patient biopsy procedures, laboratory work, and interviews with practitioners, this paper explores how the clinical and research value of one such trial was accomplished in everyday practice by focussing on the work of clinical trials and laboratory staff across recruitment, laboratory analysis, and results management. In the face of numerous potential set-backs, disappointments and failure, we explore how practitioners worked to balance the need to meet established measures of value such as numbers of patients recruited into the trial, alongside cultivating the value of positive affects for patients by managing their expectations and emotions. This care work was performed primarily by practitioners whose roles have historically been devalued in healthcare practice and yet, as we show, were critical to this process. We conclude by arguing that as complex multi-arm adaptive trials become more commonplace, we need to attend to, and render visible, the dynamic and care-full valuation practices of backstage practitioners through which experimental biomedicine is accomplished, and in doing so show that care both achieves clinical and research value, and is also a series of practices and processes that tends to tissue, patients and staff in the context of ever-present possibility of failure. • Experimental genomic based trials are difficult to accomplish in practice. • Valuation practices happen throughout recruitment and trial participation. • Value was made via coordinative practices of care in the context of failure. • Staff balance clinical and research value alongside expectations and emotions. • Vital backstage practices of care were performed by devalued healthcare staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]