Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

‘Doing’ Hypertension: Experiential Knowledge And Practice In The Self-Management Of ‘High Blood’ In The Philippines, Gideon Lasco, Alicia Renedo, Jhaki A. Mendoza, Maureen L. Seguin, Benjamin Palafox, Lia M. Palileo-Villanueva, Dina Balabanova, Martin Mckee

Development Studies Faculty Publications

Patients’ embodied experiences do not always correspond to the biomedical concepts of particular diseases. Drawing from year-long fieldwork in the Philippines that involved semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and digital diaries, we examine how individuals ‘do’ hypertension through their embodied experiences and the knowledge and practice that emerge from them. Drawing inspiration from Annemarie Mol’s work on the notion of ‘multiplicity’ of disease, our analysis was informed by a commitment to privileging patients’ embodied experiences and the multiple ontologies of hypertension. We find that for patients diagnosed with hypertension in the Philippines, symptoms enact illness; patients rely on their …