Lifestyle medicine is the use of lifestyle interventions in the prevention, treatment and management of disease. A faith-based community, which is the subject of much health lifestyle research, is the focus of this study. The Seventh-day Adventist church has promoted a healthy lifestyle, including a plant-based diet, since its foundation in 1863. Research shows that Adventists are much healthier and live significantly longer than the general population. Adventist vegetarians are even more healthy, and live about five years longer than non-vegetarians. The present study was designed to investigate how church leaders relate to the Adventist health lifestyle, and to what extent information about the benefits of adopting this lifestyle is communicated to church members in Sweden. Survey interviews with specific health-related lifestyle questions were used to collect the data. 60% of the respondents reported being vegetarian or vegan. Many agreed that pastors should be health educators as much as gospel preachers, but a majority did not have any academic or other education on health. Only a minority stated that they often preach or share the Adventist health message, but most respondents agreed that every church should be a school of health. The educational program for pastors and other church leaders should include adequate training and experience in health and lifestyle medicine from a faith-based perspective. Seventh-day Adventists should be the first to take full advantage of an evidence-based healthy lifestyle and live as examples to others.

Men in economically advanced societies are more at-risk of premature mortality due to heart disease than women, and this risk is inversely proportional to their socioeconomic status (SES). In Canada, many public health reports indicate that cardiovascular disease represent about one third of all causes of death and that men’s mortality rates from these diseases are two times higher than women, making it the main contributor to health inequality. Underprivileged men have been identified as being less receptive to cardiac rehabilitation guidelines, yet research promoting heart healthy behaviours has often neglected the social mechanisms that influence the lifestyle of this population. This study aims to understand the social variation in dispositions and commitments toward body care of men from two contrasting socioeconomic groups who have suffered from a cardiovascular incident requiring hospitalization. It draws primarily on Pierre Bourdieu’s socio-cultural theory of practice and his concept of bodily habitus in order to understand distinctive lifestyle patterns in the context of cardiac rehabilitation. Qualitative data was collected through 60 semi-structured interviews of an average duration of 90 minutes. Participants were Francophone men (average age of 57.3) from the Outaouais region of the Province of Québec, Canada. A thematic content analysis showed strong social variation in terms of lifestyle and identified different dispositions towards body care in the context of heart disease. Results are organized according to three key strategies for human flourishing following a heart incident that are relevant to understand the dispositions to adopt (or not) heath practices in the context of cardiac rehabilitation: (a) achieving a sense of security; (b) preserving autonomy; and (c) maintaining dignity. The comparison between socioeconomic groups highlights the incompatibilities of healthcare services and rehabilitation programs with the priorities of underprivileged men. It also flags the potential ethical and political dimension of healthcare by examining notions of health citizenship. In conclusion, the thesis discusses the socio-political characteristics of cardiac rehabilitation programs, and the usefulness of class-based masculinities as an alternative point of view to understand health implications of lifestyles.

This study explores the digitalization of healthcare phenomenon in relation to patient empowerment. Because digital environments change the way individuals interact with healthcare providers, there are consequences for patients’ ability to act and determine their health outcomes in a digital health ecosystem. An assessment of the mediatization of healthcare was therefore conducted through a critical phenomenological analysis of patients’ lived experiences. This methodology facilitated an investigation of their descriptive and subjective reflections on health structures and the means of entering into capabilities that can, but not necessarily do, emerge from specific technical artifacts. Through in-depth interviews, I accessed patients’ perspectives and narratives to phenomenologically enter into their consciousness intentionalities. These revealed that mediatized healthcare certainly affects, possibly enables, and risks constraining health agency. In theoretical terms, this study was based on structural dimensions within the theories of mediatization (Couldry & Hepp, 2017) and health lifestyles (Cookerham, 2005), combined with the individual dimensions of patients’ capabilities (Oosterlaken, 2015) represented by empowerment constructs (Palumbo, 2017), where it elaborates on matters of structure and agency as interrelated and negotiated concepts. The thesis concludes with a critical discussion of the avoidance of technological determinism of the phenomenon: digital tools were incorporated in some of the capabilities of participants, and indeed sometimes contribute to their empowerment, but not always and not for everything. Empowerment must be seen as a process rather than an outcome and, concerning digitalization processes, must be investigated by scrutinizing individual initiatives embedded in a long chain of interconnectedness.