Melania Calestani

Kingston University · Midiwfery

By portraying the circumstances of people living with chronic conditions in radically different contexts, from Alzheimer’s patients in the UK to homeless people with psychiatric disorders in India, Managing Chronicity in Unequal States offers glimpses of what dealing with medically complex conditions in stratified societies means. While in some pla...

Objetivo: examinar, mediante una perspectiva fenomenológica, las percepciones, las valoraciones y las experiencias de las personas indígenas del contexto rural en situación de vulnerabilidad estructural durante la pandemia de COVID-19. Metodología: se realizaron entrevistas a siete indígenas residentes en contextos rurales del estado de Oaxaca. Res...

Background: People with severe brain injuries (PSBI) and reduced capacity to consent (CTC) frequently develop muscle contractures. Standard care includes prolonged stretch (PS) but there is limited condition-specific evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Purpose: Identify factors affecting the inclusion of PSBI and reduced CTC in a...

Based on research in Matamoros (Mexico) and Naples (Italy), this article critically deconstructs embodiments and social histories of toxicity, addressing uneven power relations and health inequalities generated through late capitalism of the Anthropocene. By focusing on food and water consumption in regions at the margins of borders and defined as...

An ethnographic review into the experiences of weight stigma as experienced by women of a higher weight during their maternity care.

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Background: People with post-stroke dysphagia often require informal care from family to facilitate safe swallowing, modify food/drink or administer tube-feeds. Previous survey studies have found dysphagia may increase family caregiver burden. However, the experiences of family members in this population have not been fully explored. Aims: To ex...

Purpose This study aims to highlight an innovative project, across three European countries, namely, Italy, Sweden and Romania, that used pictorial designs to empower young women to demand the right to live without sexual harassment. Design/methodology/approach Abstract figures in terms of race and gender of young people were produced on cards, wh...

This issue reflects the interest sparked by an international group of academics. There was a degree of urgency, given our awareness that the era of leftleaning governments in the region that had inspired hope more than a decade ago was coming to an end, to be replaced by new populisms and politics gleefully undoing the human development progress ac...

https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/lapa/48/3

Objectives To investigate the contribution, efficiency and safety of experienced physician associates included in the staffing of medical/surgical teams in acute hospitals in England, including facilitating and hindering factors. Design Mixed methods longitudinal, multi-site evaluation of a two-year programme employing 27 American physician associ...

Ecosystem services frameworks effectively assume that nature's contributions to human well-being derive from people receiving benefits from nature. At the same time, efforts (money, time, or energy) for conservation, restoration or stewardship are often considered costs to be minimized. But what if caring for nature is itself an essential component...

Objectives: What is the impact of the adapted Buurtzorg model on feasibility, acceptability and effective outcomes in an English district nursing service? Design: Mixed methods case study. Setting: Primary care. Participants: Neighbourhood nursing team (Buurtzorg model), patients and carers, general practitioners (GPs), other health professi...

This volume invites the reader to join in with the recent focus on subjectivity and self-reflection, as the means of understanding and engaging with the social and historical changes in the world through storytelling. It examines the symbiosis between anthropology and fiction, on the one hand, by looking at various ways in which the two fields co-e...

Background It is well recognized that there is significant variation between centers in access to kidney transplantation. In the absence of high-grade evidence, it is unclear whether variation is due to patient case mix, other center factors, or individual clinician decisions. This study sought consensus between UK clinicians on factors that should...

Introduction: Despite the availability of guidelines for the evaluation of candidates for renal transplantation, variation in access to transplantation exists. This national survey investigates whether centre variation exists in the assessment of patients for renal transplantation in the UK. Methods: An online survey, informed by qualitative int...

Europe has set out its plans to foster a ‘green economy’, focused around recycling, by 2020. This pan-European recycling economy, it is argued, will have the triple virtues of: first, stopping wastes being ‘dumped’ on poor countries; second, reusing them and thus decoupling economic prosperity from demands on global resources; and third, creating a...

In recent decades there has been increasing interest in academic, governmental, and nongovernmental circles worldwide in developing universal definitions of well-being. Governments have progressively shifted their policies on this concept and are currently engaged in improving the well-being of their populations. Bolivia’s concept of suma qamaña (l...

Background: There is variation in time to listing and rates of listing for transplantation between renal units in the UK. While research has mainly focused on healthcare organization, little is known about patient perspectives of entry onto the transplant waiting list. This qualitative study aimed to explore patients' views and experiences of kidne...

The aim of this encyclopedia is to provide a comprehensive reference work on scientific and other scholarly research on the quality of life, including health-related quality of life research or also called patient-reported outcomes research Since the 1960s two over-lapping but fairly distinct research communities and traditions have developed conce...

Globalisation has led to increasing cultural and religious diversity in cities around the world. What are the implications for young people growing up in these settings? How do they develop their religious identities, and what roles do families, friends and peers, teachers, religious leaders and wider cultural influences play in the process? Furthe...

This chapter sums up the main themes of the book, discussing the relationship between anthropology and well-being and looking at some of the main theoretical background used in this research. It also includes a reflection on the value of an ethnographic account that can convey diverse generational and gender perspectives, and provide a possible bri...

In this chapter, I set the scene and provide information on household dynamics in El Alto, Bolivia, while also providing some details on the importance of having harmonious relations with kin and with neighbours. Relations are the core of this chapter. I consider both the tensions and forms of collaboration that may exist within the household. I de...

This chapter looks at how my ethnographic research questions the very validity of a general, abstract concept of well-being, showing the importance of taking into account local criteria and trying to overcome the often reproduced fracture between theoretical models and everyday life, between the factual and the possible. The point of departure for...

Dominant paradigms of wellbeing continue to struggle to make sense of what this term means. Equally, policy makers struggle to make dominant visions of wellbeing a reality. This paper examines the understanding of wellbeing recently adopted by the Bolivian constitution. High relevance is given to indigenous understandings of 'vivir bien', a concept...

Introduction and Aims: Renal allograft recipients with thrombophilia are at higher risk for early allograft loss, microvascular occlusion and acute rejection with major consequences for allograft survival. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the prevalence of prothrombotic risk factors in patients awaiting renal transplantation and its con...

Background Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are often proposed as ‘technological fixes’ for problems facing healthcare. They promise to deliver services more quickly and cheaply. Yet research on the implementation of ICTs reveals a litany of delays, compromises and failures. Case studies have established that these technologies are...

This volume is a unique contribution to the exploration of a new perspective in the study of well-being, which tries to overcome the quantification bias by creating an account of ‘the good life’ in a specific place. Rather than numbers, this research focuses on local narratives, emphasising the urgent need to include a wider range of methodological...

Dominant paradigms of wellbeing continue to struggle to make sense of what this term means. Equally, policy makers struggle to make dominant visions of wellbeing a reality. This paper examines the understanding of wellbeing recently adopted by the Bolivian constitution. High relevance is given to indigenous understandings of 'vivir bien', a concept...

This chapter deals with the fiesta or religious festivity in El Alto, Bolivia, and the power attached to dancing. As in the case of social protests, fiestas are an important manifestation of communal values. However, while social protests are joined by the majority of the households, fiestas are attended in the majority of the cases by Catholics an...

This chapter looks at social mobilisation in the city of El Alto, Bolivia. By drawing on ethnographic research, this chapter analyses the importance of participating in social protests for local residents. The collective is seen as a shared value. Nevertheless, my research also addresses issues in relation to how people may or may not feel constrai...

This paper considers recycling as an economic activity, locating it in debates about economization, marketization and performativity. It argues that recycling is a reflexive intervention in economic activity which extends the boundaries of markets, by internalizing objects formerly externalized as wastes and by attending to the temporal properties...

The last twenty years have witnessed an important movement in the aspirations of public policy beyond meeting merely material goals towards a range of outcomes captured through the use of the term 'wellbeing'. Nonetheless, the concept of wellbeing is itself ill-defined, a term used in multiple different contexts with different meanings and policy i...

What does it mean to be young in El Alto, a Bolivian shantytown? Based on ethnographic research, this article looks at cultural resilience among young people in a vulnerable urban context. It emphasises how young people value informal youth groups as a tool to valorise their own indigenous culture. This is echoed in the world of adults, implying th...

Contents:Religion in nursing / Marsha Fowler -- Religious ethics and religious social ethics / Marsha Fowler -- Religion and theoretical thinking in nursing / Barbara Pesut -- Feminist and religious ethics in nursing / Barbara Pesut -- A critical reading across religion and spirituality : contributions of postcolonial theory to nursing ethics / She...

Background Clinical decision support systems (CDSS) designed to assist healthcare staff with decision-making, are diffusing rapidly across the NHS for triage in urgent and emergency care. A new CDSS (NHS Pathways) is designed for use by non-clinical call handlers in these settings. CDSS have potential to improve decision-making (faster, more accura...

This paper forwards a performative reading of asbestos in economies of disposal. It argues that materials need to be thought through transformative states, not just stable states, and that materials’ performativity varies according to material states. As a radical intervention in form, demolition is one such transformative state, which disturbs and...

This paper addresses my understanding of well-being as harmonious relations in the city of El Alto, Bolivia. My approach shows the complexity of issues emerging when dealing with social relations. First of all, I analyse a specific case study showing the moral obligation involved among household members. Then I attempt to provide an insight into ot...

This paper addresses the importance of faith and the consequent resort to supernatural forces to acquire a sense of well-being in a poor neighbourhood in the city of El Alto, Bolivia. Religious beliefs and practices have provided an important idiom for the expression of aspirations and the pursuit of ideals. The social role of emotions and its effe...

This article is an account of different experiences, reflections and impressions that have arisen when embarking on the process of doing anthropological research and writing a thesis. The common ground of these three narratives is that they refer to our personal engagement with anthropology, our experiences within the academic world, as well as to...