Negotiating a healthy body in old age: preventive home visits and biopolitics

Abstract

The study discussed in this article sheds light on how a specific publichealth policy, the preventive home visit (PHV) aimed at senior citizens, is implemented at the local level in Denmark. Empirically the article calls attention to what is actually going on in a preventive practice, based on participant observations, interviews and ten years' worth of visitation records.1 Theoretically, the article applies a Foucauldian biopolitical approach that understands the visits as an implementation of the active ageing scheme, as the notion of prevention is practised as a continuous process, which is utilised to train people's gazes and sensitivity, and teach them to recognise ''activity'' as closely linked to future well-being and longevity. An important finding is that the intervention is not normalising *Lene Otto, Department of Ethnology and Center for Healthy Ageing, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark 1 The study is part of the work done by the research group ''Health in Everyday Life Á HEL''. This group explores the impact of activity-focused goals on midlife and elderly citizens in various preventive and health-promotion arenas, as well as the ways in which these become domesticated in the lives of the elderly. The group is part of the Centre for Healthy Ageing (CEHA) at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. As a group, we combine ethnographic fieldwork, historical analysis and readings of policy texts in order to uncover the intertwinement of cultural practices, narratives, discourses and experiences.International Journal of Ageing and Later Life, Advance access, 2013 # The Author doi: 10.3384/ijal. 1652-8670.11168 1 in a deterministic way but rather negotiable. Even though the home visitors represent a health regimen where activity is interpreted as bodily exercise, they try to avoid the tendency to prescribe for older people. Rather than prevention in the strict sense, it seems to be a health promotion strategy that encourages older people to articulate their needs. The meeting between the health visitor and the older person is characterised by conversations and negotiations about health, autonomy and bodily experiences.

Person‐centredness in elder care: A secondary analysis of data from a study among home‐dwelling men and women in the Faroe Islands

“…According to McGormack (), a way of coping with this would be to introduce “life plans” to ensure person‐centredness in eldercare, and thereby support an approach to care that responds to a person's wants, and how to support his or her preferences. This approach resemblance with Otto's () findings from her study on preventive home visits in Denmark. She argues, referring to Moll (), that home visits in practice can be understood as a negotiated, symmetrical and shared care process that is characterised by health providers who take into consideration the user's preferences, resources and networks available to them and a care process that is open‐ended health negotiation linked to a person's everyday life.…”

“…One exception is Otto (), who conducted a study to investigate how preventive home visits (PHV) are implemented among senior citizens at a local level in Denmark. PHV are intended to support older people's self‐care and help them use their own resources optimally.…”

Energy and Aging in the Danish Welfare State: Ethnographic Explorations of an Omnipresent but Forgotten Concept

“…In response to the challenges of an increasing aging population and the need to control rising costs, a radical local government reform in 2007 gave the municipalities extended tasks in care and in the fields of prevention and health promotion. In the last decade, therefore, we have seen a rise of municipal initiatives designed to promote a revitalization of the everyday lives of older people, This is done through various initiatives, such as preventive home visits (Ludvigsen 2014;Otto 2013), physical rehabilitation programs (Schwennesen 2017), everyday re-ablement programs (Christensen 2017a(Christensen , 2017b, municipal activity centers (Lassen 2017(Lassen , 2014a(Lassen , 2014b, and the design and implementation of welfare technologies (Ertner 2015;Schwennesen 2016). Hence, the municipality is the administrative body receiving most attention in this special issue.…”

Untitled

“…In recent years there has been an increased academic interest in the way old age has become a focus of biopolitical intervention (Neilson 2003;Otto 2013). When more and more people live longer, the way of life in old age becomes charged with cultural and political expectations.…”