How Children Made Sense of the Flu Pandemic

• Type: Chapter or Part of a Book
• Date: 2020

Authors

Lígia Lima (Author) ESEP; Lemos, MS (Author) Other

Book

Title: Relational concepts in medicine

Pages: 181-190

ISBN: 978-1-84888-073-3

Publisher: Inter-Disciplinary Press

Indexing

Scopus - 0 Citations

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-00X-MWT

DOI: 10.1163/9781848880733_018

Abstract (EN): During the last year, the world has faced a global health problem - a pandemic influenza which has mobilized governments and health authorities in mass prevention actions. The responsible virus (H1N1) was assumed as preferentially infecting younger people, and children were considered to be target populations in all initiatives taken to respond to the outbreak of the infection. In Portugal, schools were priority settings for prevention strategies and many measures as washing hands and using hand sanitizers were implemented as routines in children¿s school activities. As part of a wider research project, aimed to understand the characteristics of children¿s concepts of health and illness, we tried to study the extent to which the experience of the pandemic flu had an influence on the way children¿s conceive health and illness, thereby also understanding the amenability of children¿s conceptions to change. For this study two samples of school children aged 9 to 12 were compared. One sample was recruited before the flu outbreak (55 pre-flu children) and the other sample was recruited after the flu outbreak (99 post-flu children). Participants were asked to write what it meant to them to be healthy and to be ill. A category system previously validated (inter-rater agreement of 93%) was used to analyze the structure of children¿s health and illness concepts along 6 categories. Results revealed significant differences between the pre and post-flu groups in relation to `prevention¿s actions¿ references in children¿s health and illness concepts. All other categories of the health/illness concept¿s structure were similarly used by the pre and post-flu groups. These findings suggest that the flu pandemic had a significant impact, specifically through reinforcing the idea that health and illness depend on preventive behaviors. Consequently, findings also point to the possibility of deliberately influencing health and illness conceptions in the appropriate direction. © (year), (Publisher Name). All rights reserved.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific