Intuitive tracking: Blending competing approaches to exercise and eating.

Under the conditions of neo-liberal individual responsibilisation, self-tracking has become the predominant model of health management. More recently, though, intuition-based approaches to exercise and eating are also gaining traction. These two approaches are often located in opposition.

"Whatever I said didn't register with her": medical fatphobia and interactional and relational disconnect in healthcare encounters.

Introduction: This article focuses on medical fatphobia as a specific phenomenon structuring interactions between patients and healthcare practitioners. Throughout the article, we use 'fat' and 'fatphobia' as the preferred terms in the body positivity and fat acceptance communities. It is well documented that 'fat' people frequently experience negative and highly stigmatising healthcare encounters where weight is disproportionately centred and over-attributed as a cause of ill-health.

The Social and Material Life of Antimicrobial Clay: Exploring Antimicrobial Resistance, Medicines' Materiality, and Medicines Optimization.

While sociologists have made significant theoretical contributions to the antimicrobial resistance (AMR) debate, little attention has been given to the antimicrobial products themselves. Here we advocate a significant new direction which centers on the social and material life of antimicrobials, specifically on what they are made from and how this affects their use. This focus is timely because, in the context of declining efficacy of biomedical antibiotics, diverse materials are increasingly taking center stage in research and drug discovery as potential agents for new antimicrobial treatments.

A qualitative study exploring the lived experience of medication use in different disease states: Linking experiences of disease symptoms to medication adherence.

What Is Known: Medication non-adherence leads to negative health outcomes. Medication adherence is predicted if patients understand the necessity of medication use to control disease symptoms and progression. It could be expected then, that patients with diseases with symptoms which are managed with medications, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder or gout, or diseases with high-mortality rates, such as cancer, would have higher adherence rates than asymptomatic diseases, such as hypertension.

'I just don't think it's that natural': adolescent mothers' constructions of breastfeeding as deviant.

Breastfeeding is recognised globally as the optimal method of infant feeding. For Murphy (1999) its nutritional superiority positions breastfeeding as a moral imperative where mothers who formula-feed are open to charges of maternal deviance and must account for their behaviour. We suggest that this moral superiority of breastfeeding is tenuous for mothers from marginalised contexts and competes with discourses which locate breastfeeding, rather than formula feeding, as maternal deviance.

Exploring an extended role for pharmacy assistants on inpatient wards in UK hospitals: using mixed methods to develop the role of medicines assistants.

Objectives: This project explored the deployment of pharmacy assistants to inpatient wards in a new role as 'medicines assistants' (MA).

Methods: Ward-based MAs were introduced to six wards across two UK hospitals to support medicines administration. Each 30-bed ward delivered acute inpatient services with MAs supporting typical nursing medication administration rounds to 15 patients.

Discussing alcohol in medicines use reviews: experiences of patients in a community pharmacy context.

Objectives: Although pharmacist-led medicines use reviews (MURs) are effective for medicines management, little is understood about patients' experiences of alcohol-related advice delivered therein. Sampling a population at high risk for misuse (within an area of socio-economic deprivation), we explored patient experiences of alcohol-related MURs.

Methods: Two focus groups were conducted with patients who had discussed alcohol in an MUR in the preceding 3 months (n = 9).

Health behaviours of young mothers: Implications for health promotion and cancer prevention.

Objective: Evidence suggests that younger mothers engage in poorer health behaviours, resulting in increased cancer risk. We aimed to better understand the health behaviours of younger mothers and the factors that influence their lifestyle choices, in order to improve cancer prevention within this population.

Methods: A multiple focus group, photo-elicitation-aided approach was used, in which young mothers ( = 27; aged 16-24 years) were provided with cameras and asked to capture 'a week in your life'.

The pharmacy gaze: bodies in pharmacy practice.

The body is a central feature of pharmacy practice. Despite this and the increased sociological focus on bodies in health and social care practice, the nature of the body and the work undertaken upon it in pharmacy have not been explored. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with hospital and community pharmacists, this article explores the ways in which bodies are constructed and managed in these two practice contexts.

"They're made in factories and not by witches on the allotment": a qualitative study of midlife women in the united kingdom, exploring their approaches to complementary and alternative medicines.

This article explores midlife women's experiences and approaches related to complementary and alternative therapies (CAMS). Ninety-six midlife women were asked about their use of CAMs as part of their overall approach to midlife health. Qualitative thematic analysis was combined with a case-based approach.