Risk, significance and biomedicalisation of a new population: older women's experience of osteoporosis screening.

This article explores the illness experience associated with being diagnosed at risk of a long term chronic condition and discusses the implications of an emergent form of predictive medicine. We report on findings from a study involving 30 older women between the ages of 73-85 years of age recently screened for osteoporosis and informed that they are at a higher than average risk of breaking a bone in the next 10 years, but not formally diagnosed with osteoporosis. Data were gathered by the Adherence to Osteoporosis Medicine (ATOM) study using in-depth interviews with women in their own homes in Norfolk & Suffolk, UK in 2009-2010.