Abstract

Dr Alicia Renedo and Dr Cicely Marston from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine have been investigating how involving the public can improve patient care in the UK National Health Service (NHS): what works, why and how? Within this four-year ethnographic project, they have been exploring socio-psychological, spatial and cultural dimensions of patient involvement. These dimensions are unexplored in the literature and are also often neglected in patient involvement and community participation interventions, despite being crucial for their success.

In this presentation, Alicia will examine how participatory spaces and citizenship are co-constituted in the context of patient involvement and participation efforts. She will present a theoretical framework for conceptualising participatory citizenship in which acts of citizenship in healthcare are understood in terms of the spaces they are in.

She will draw on examples from fieldwork to illustrate how participants’ acts of citizenship both shape and are shaped by participatory spaces. To understand participatory citizenship, we should take spatiality into account, and track the ongoing spatial negotiations and productions through which people can improve healthcare.