Eivind Engebretsen

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Oslo

Modern medicine is confronted with cultural crossings in various forms. In facing these challenges, it is not enough to simply increase our insight into the cultural dimensions of health and well-being. We must, more radically, question the conventional distinction between the ‘objectivity of science’ and the ‘subjectivity of culture’. This obligat...

In this conceptual paper, we argue that at times of crisis, what is sometimes called “evidence-based” or “science-driven” policymaking—establishing scientific truths and then implementing them—must be tempered by a more agile, deliberative and inclusive approach which acknowledges and embraces uncertainty. We offer pragmatism as one potential optio...

The COVID-19 crisis has transformed the highly specialized issue of what constitutes reliable medical evidence into a topic of public concern and debate. This book interrogates the assumption that evidence means the same thing to different constituencies and in different contexts. Rather than treating various practices of knowledge as rational or i...

This article argues for a more critical, transformative and philosophically-underpinned approach to teaching Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The standard approach presents the SDGs as uncontested and universally agreed-upon targets, which oversimplifies their complexity and inherent contradictions and engages only superficially with the centr...

Motivation: Gender is a central concept and a buzzword in the development aid discourse. Like many buzzwords, its meaning is malleable. If aid efforts really are to "leave no one behind," as the Sustainable Development Goals proclaim, we must critically interrogate how the discursive articulation of buzzwords such as gender can both make visible an...

In this Circle U. Open Lecture, I explore how the medical humanities can bridge the gap between evidence and action, using the SDGs as a key case study. To make this happen, we need a translational approach—one that connects insights from history, philosophy, and discourse analysis with scientific knowledge and practical efforts to address global c...

In a lot of research on loneliness and technology, there is an underlying premise that actual, physical presence is more real than ‘virtual’ presence. This premise is rarely explicit, yet it implies a hierarchy of reality, where the ‘here and now’ is always on top. In this theoretical paper, we examine this latent hierarchy and the understandings o...

Inspired by the current transdisciplinary debate about decolonisation, this article raises the fundamental question of how medicine can manage its own history in a way that safeguards the drive for decolonisation, but without eradicating the traces of previous misconceptions. We will do so by reconsidering a case from the complex records of physica...

The adoption of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) marks a significant shift in global political agendas, emphasising sustainability in various fields, including health. To engage meaningfully with sustainability, a transformative educational approach is essential. Lange’s concept of transformative learning encompasses three l...

Whilst policymaking will always remain a highly political process, especially amidst crises, evidence-based pandemic management can benefit from adopting a socioecological perspective that integrates multi- and trans-disciplinary insights: from biology, biomedicine, mathematics, statistics, social and behavioural sciences, as well as the perspectiv...

The COVID-19 pandemic put the life science sector to the test. Vaccines were developed at unprecedented speed, benefiting from decades of fundamental research and now honoured by a Nobel Prize. However, we saw that the fruits of science were inequitably distributed. Most low- and middle-income countries were left behind, deepening the inequalities...

This editorial critiques the existing literature on decolonizing global health, using the current assault on health in Gaza as a case in point. It argues that the failure to address the ongoing violence and blatant targeting of health facilities, personnel and innocent civilians demonstrates most clearly the limitations of an approach that is stron...

There is a growing acceptance that ADHD is a multi-dimensional disorder in which not all symptoms are associated with deficits or functional impairments. This article contributes to research on the positive aspects of the diagnosis, specifically understanding the positive aspects of living with ADHD. The empirical data was based on individual inter...

Purpose: This study aims to define critical domains of salutogenic home visits conducted by public health nurses, and how thevisits can supplement a universal Child Health Clinic. Design and method: A qualitative grounded theory study was conducted among three public health nurses in Stovner district, Oslo, Norway. The nurses were followed for 2...

Policy Points The concept of value complexity (complexity arising from differences in people's worldviews, interests, and values, leading to mistrust, misunderstanding, and conflict among stakeholders) is introduced and explained. Relevant literature from multiple disciplines is reviewed. Key theoretical themes, including power, conflict, language...

Purpose Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is currently the most prevalent childhood psychiatric diagnosis. This article reports how 10 young adults in Norway positioned themselves before they were diagnosed with ADHD either during early childhood or adolescence. A central theme is how these subject-positions relate to societal norms a...

This conceptual paper argues the need for narrative preparedness, understood as the ability to engage and empathize with peoples’ stories and the values they encode, assess them based on the universe in which people live, and acknowledge the narrative rationality of each story – even when it conflicts with the rationality of science. Expanding ‘hea...

Since the Roman mythographer Hyginus composed the fable of Cura in the second century AD, it has been cited and reemployed in literary and philosophical texts by authors like Augustin, Herder, Goethe, Heidegger, Blumenberg and Kristeva. These authors all use the tale about the ambiguous figure of Cura (Care) to reflect upon the fundamentals of the...

Sustainability as a concept is found across a multitude of sectors in today’s society. This ‘sustainability turn’ as we might call it, has made its entry into educational paradigms such as ‘education for sustainable development’. The healthcare sector has embraced the notion of sustainability primarily by emphasizing how climate change impacts huma...

Objective: To develop a co-designed health literacy (HL)-informed intervention for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) that enables them to find, understand, remember, use and communicate the health information needed to promote and maintain good health. Design: This study used a co-design approach informed by the programme...

Interest in the political dimensions of translation is well established. There has been less focus in translation studies, however, on understanding the nature of the political itself. This leaves the concept fuzzy and limits its analytical power. This article begins to address this gap by drawing on the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe to...

Rationale, aims & objective: Patients who seek healthcare for long-lasting pain and symptoms without a detectable disease must put in extra work to be taken seriously and gain recognition as a patient. However, little is known about how patients' help-seeking is performed in clinical practice. The aim of the current study was to gain knowledge abo...

This article tests the hypothesis that all pandemics are inherently translational. We argue that translation and translation theory can be fruitfully used to understand and manage epidemics, as they help us explore concepts of infectivity and immunity in terms of cultural and biological resistance. After examining the linkage between translation an...

The COVID-19 crisis has transformed the highly specialized issue of what constitutes reliable medical evidence into a topic of public concern and debate. This book interrogates the assumption that evidence means the same thing to different constituencies and in different contexts. Rather than treating various practices of knowledge as rational or i...

Chapter 5 examines some of the rationales for pharmaceutical interventions, especially vaccines, and resistance to them. Vaccine-hesitant and anti-vaccine activists have questioned different aspects of the Covid-19 vaccination programme, and some have even argued that the whole virus is a scam and part of a plot to profit from selling vaccines. The...

This chapter examines disagreements about mass public health measures such as lockdowns and physical distancing, which have dominated discussions around Covid-19. Policy-oriented discourses such as recommendations and media briefings have argued for more or less severe measures, ranging from national curfews to mandated physical distancing, or miti...

This chapter outlines the overall aims and rationale for the book and explains how it differs from two established models in the study of medicine: evidence-based medicine and narrative medicine. It argues that science is inevitably and inextricably embedded in a multitude of narratives told by both scientists and non-scientists and further acknowl...

The final chapter revisits some of the tenets of the narrative paradigm, based on the analyses presented in the preceding three chapters, and suggests ways in which the concept of narrative rationality may be further developed and nuanced. Fisher distinguishes between objectivist knowledge and praxial knowledge and argues that it is the latter type...

Arguments about the pros and cons and possible effectiveness of face masks have occupied considerable space in specialist, medical venues such as peer-reviewed journals and science blogs as well as public forums such as mainstream media and social media – the latter attracting contributions from medical specialists and lay members of the public ali...

This chapter provides a theoretical basis for examining the tension between scientific and lay rationality that continues to undermine attempts to address such vital healthcare issues as vaccine hesitancy or lack of compliance with regulations and test regimes during a pandemic. It outlines the main tenets of the narrative paradigm, acknowledges cr...

Evidence‐based healthcare is the prevailing model for healthcare services. In Cochrane's seminal thinking, political context was included with the purpose of promoting healthcare equity. However, the subsequent evidence‐based healthcare models marginalized political context. In this paper, we argue that current models of evidence‐based healthcare f...

The aim of the present paper is to describe and discuss how recent theories about translation, bridging medical and humanistic understandings of knowledge translation, in the medical humanities can bring about a new understanding of health literacy in the context of patient education. We argue that knowledge translation must be understood as active...

In this article, and the topical collection accompanying it, we aim to challenge so-called knowledge translation (hereinafter KT) in medicine and healthcare. The abbreviation ‘KT’ refers to a variety of scientific practices and research activities, bound together by the common goal of ‘bridging the gap’ between science in laboratories and clinical...

The COVID-19 crisis has transformed the highly specialized issue of what constitutes reliable medical evidence into a topic of public concern and debate. This book interrogates the assumption that evidence means the same thing to different constituencies and in different contexts. Rather than treating various practices of knowledge as rational or i...

Agenda 2030 with the Sustainable Development Goals makes the transformative pledge to ‘leave no one behind.’ This paper asks how Agenda 2030 bring certain gendered vulnerabilities to light and make others invisible, and how this affects that transformative pledge. Through a close reading supported by Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau’s discourse th...

Evidence-based medicine has been the subject of much controversy within and outside the field of medicine, with its detractors characterizing it as reductionist and authoritarian, and its proponents rejecting such characterization as a caricature of the actual practice. At the heart of this controversy is a complex linguistic and social process tha...

This article explores recent HIV prevention campaigns for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), focusing on how they integrate pleasure and desire in their calls for self-discipline through a continual use of pharmaceuticals. This emerging type of health promotion, here represented by ads promoting the preventive use of pharmaceuticals, no longer simply...

The aim of the present paper is to describe and discuss how recent theories about translation, bridging medical and humanistic understandings of knowledge translation, in the medical humanities (Kristeva et al 2018) can bring about a new understanding of health literacy in the context of patient education. We argue that knowledge translation must b...

This study explores how parents involved in care order processes in Norway perceive being positioned by Child Welfare Services (CWS) in this process, how they negotiate these positions and whether their loss is perceived as legitimate or illegitimate in the face of societal expectations of parenthood. The data consist of qualitative interviews with...

Introduction Most research on loneliness comes from the health sciences, statistically seeking to measure the health-related effects of feeling alone or isolated. There is a need to expand on this understanding and explore loneliness as a more complex social phenomenon. In this article, we present a qualitative design for studying the intersection...

Background Following an implementation plan based on dynamic dialogue between researchers and clinicians, this study implemented an evidence-based patient education program (tested in an RCT) into routine care at a clinical transplant center. The aim of this study was to investigate renal recipients’ knowledge and self-efficacy during first year th...

Background Patients awaiting kidney transplantation need to be prepared ahead of the upcoming transplantation by developing targeted pre- and post-transplant knowledge. On this background, we designed a new health literacy intervention, including a film and a counselling session, based on motivational interviewing for dialysis patients provided by...

Objective Persons with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) require complex follow-up by healthcare professionals (HCPs) and may experience several health literacy (HL) needs. This study aimed to explore such needs in people with COPD and the HCPs who care for them. Methods From October 2016 to August 2017 a qualitative study with four foc...

Purpose To explore, from a philosophy of knowledge perspective, the contribution of the guideline development process to reducing epistemic uncertainty in clinical decision-making – defined as the challenge of applying evidence to patients, dealing with conflicting information and determining the level of confidence in a medical conclusion. Method...

Background: The United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are parts of an ambitious framework for global development, the 2030 Agenda. Voluntary national reviews (VNRs) are described as "cornerstones" in the followup system, which is premised on international sharing of knowledge and experience. Norway and Sweden are among the world...

Objective To strengthen patients’ health literacy and their role as active knowledge actors, we developed a health communication intervention including a film-viewing and counselling session for patients awaiting kidney transplantation. We aimed to explore processes of knowing in the translation of the intervention. Methods We applied an ethnograp...

The patient's perspective on improvement in psychotherapy is crucial for tailoring the therapy he or she is receiving. The present study aimed at exploring the factors aiding and the patients' experiences of improvement in time-limited psychodynamic psychotherapy for depression. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with ten adult pat...

In the psychodynamic psychotherapy of adolescents, a mutual relationship is a central and often reoccurring theme. However, what this mutuality consists of and how adolescents experience this seems to have been the subject of scant investigation or conceptualization. Thus, the aim of the present study was to obtain a more comprehensive insight into...

In this introductory essay, we will present a translational medical humanities approach where the humanities are not only an auxiliary to medical science and practice, but also an interdisciplinary space where both medicine and the humanities mutually challenge and inform each other. First, we explore how medicine’s attempt to tackle the nature–cul...

Background A kidney transplantation requires complex self-care skills and adequate follow-up from health-care providers. Identifying strengths and limitations in different aspects of health literacy (HL) and associated variables are central to being able to improve health care. The objective of this study was to identify core variables associated w...

The main objective of this study was to explore how kidney transplant recipients find, understand, and use health information, and make decisions about their health—also known as health literacy. Kidney transplant recipients must take an active part in their health following the transplantation, since a new organ requires new medication and focus o...

This paper reviews the literature on health and female homosexuality in Brazil and, along the way, outlines an alternative approach to reviewing academic literature. Rather than summarising the contents of previously published papers, we relate to these publications primarily as partakers in the creation of knowledge. Inspired by Actor-Network Theo...

Purpose Quality of life (QOL) is an important concept in the field of health and medicine. QOL is a complex concept that is interpreted and defined differently within and between disciplines, including the fields of health and medicine. The aims of this study were to systematically review the literature on QOL in medicine and health research and to...

Objectives Abstract In modern philosophy, the concept of truth has been problematized from different angles, yet in evidence-based health care (EBHC), it continues to operate hidden and almost undisputed through the linked concept of ‘bias.’ To prevent unwarranted relativism and make better inferences in clinical practice, clinicians may benefit fr...

Purpose Quality of life (QOL) is an important concept in the field of health and medicine. QOL is a complex concept that is interpreted and defined differently within and between disciplines, including the fields of health and medicine. The aims of this study were to systematically review the literature on QOL in medicine and health research and to...

This article explores how caseworkers in a Scandinavian street-level labour and welfare administration run their return-to-work program. Observations and interviews from compulsory meetings between the welfare administration, the person on sick leave, the employer and the sick-listing GP are analysed. The analysis draws on the philosopher Annemarie...

Background Patient‐centred education is a key element in the care of patients undergoing kidney transplantation. We implemented a tailored, evidence‐based education programme for the post‐transplant phase. Objective The aim of the study was to explore renal transplant recipients’ experiences of participating in a new, tailored, evidence‐based educ...

A patient-centred approach has gained increasing interest in medicine and other health sciences. Whereas there are discussions about the meaning of a patient-centred approach and what the concept entails, little is known about how the patient as a person is understood in patient-centred care. This article investigates understandings of the patient...

Background There is emerging evidence for the effectiveness of psychodynamic psychotherapy for depressive disorders. However, we know less of how this relation-focused therapy mode is experienced and what the patients themselves identify as helpful. Hence, the purpose of this study is to explore adolescents’ experiences of factors promoting improve...

Objective: To understand how a new patient education programme for renal recipients becomes situated and adapted when implemented in daily hospital teaching practice. The analysis focuses in particular on how principles of individual tailoring and patient involvement are adapted. Design: Ethnographic observation study. 19 teaching sessions were ob...

Objective To understand how a new patient education programme for renal recipients becomes situated and adapted when implemented in daily hospital teaching practice. The analysis focuses in particular on how principles of individual tailoring and patient involvement are adapted. Design Ethnographic observation study. 19 teaching sessions were obse...

Background: Few early intervention programs aimed at maternal and child health have been developed to be integrated in the existing Child Health Service in a country where the service is free, voluntary and used by the majority of the eligible population. This study presents the process and the critical steps in developing the "New Mothers" progra...

When the patient applies for disability benefit in Norway, the general practitioner (GP) is required by the National Insurance Administration (NAV) to confirm that the patient is unfit for work due to disease. Considering the important social role of medical certificates, they have been given surprisingly little attention by the medical critique. T...

In modern philosophy, the concept of truth has been problematized from different angles, yet in evidence‐based health care (EBHC), it continues to operate hidden and almost undisputed through the linked concept of “bias.” To prevent unwarranted relativism and make better inferences in clinical practice, clinicians may benefit from a closer analysis...

A History of Modern Translation Knowledge is the first attempt to map the coming into being of modern thinking about translation. It breaks with the well-established tradition of viewing history through the reductive lens of schools, theories, turns or interdisciplinary exchanges. It also challenges the artificial distinction between past and prese...

Background: Nurses' strategies regarding patient education should be informed by the best available research evidence. Clinical nurses play an essential role in implementing new patient education programmes for renal transplant recipients. Aim: This study investigated transplant nurse job satisfaction, competence, training and perceptions of qua...

Background: As a response to the criticisms evidence-based practice currently faces, groups of health care researchers and guideline makers have started to call for the appraisal and inclusion of different kinds of knowledge in guideline production (other than randomized controlled trials [RCTs]) to better link with the informal knowledge used in...

This article explores how knowledge is expressed and enacted in the practice of physiotherapy with children. The empirical material was generated through close observation of seven physiotherapy treatment sessions involving 7 children between 6 and 11 years old and 5 physiotherapists. Observations were undertaken by the first author, whose post-ses...

This report is a long version of the one that was submitted by the “Commission Expert Group1 on the interim evaluation of Gender equality as a crosscutting issue in Horizon 2020” to contribute to the overall interim evaluation of Horizon 2020 as set in Article 32 of the Horizon 2020 Framework Regulation. This report aims to identify possible improv...