Abstract
Greater social research aiming to understand the qualitative experiences of patients and healthcare workers is necessary in order to create informed health policies. A key aspect of this is acknowledging and uncovering how 'lay' and 'expert' medical knowledge interact and co-exist. This paper uses the context of fever treatment in Yangon, Myanmar, to investigate the factors behind differences between 'lay' and 'expert' medical knowledge. This cross-sectional study conducts a deductive thematic analysis of secondary qualitative data from both patients and medical doctors using an adapted form of Amartya Sen’s capability approach framework. Results uncover how education, socially rooted collective knowledge and unregulated pharmacies drive differences between 'lay' and 'expert' medical knowledge. The results of this paper highlight the interdisciplinary nature of health, meaning health systems should be considered within their sociological, political and economic contexts. Appreciating the complexity of how health is understood by populations can allow policymakers to form a stronger health system by creating contextualised policies and health interventions for the general public that cater to the diversity of narratives within health systems and beliefs.
Highlights
There has been great interest in social literature to better understand 'layman' beliefs of treatment and medicine
Inputs Access to healthcare providers and medicines is an input to the capability approach adapted to the realm of health (Ariana and Naveed, 2009) and can be seen in the context of Yangon, with most respondents living within close distance to a clinic: From the house, it's about 10 minutes [by motorcycle]
Findings of this study show that the level of education of patients, the collective knowledge of the community that can be tied to familial knowledge, and the knowledge contributed by unregulated pharmacies are the key factors that enable differences between 'lay' and 'expert' medical knowledge
Summary
There has been great interest in social literature to better understand 'layman' beliefs of treatment and medicine. This paper examines 'lay' medical knowledge in conjunction with 'expert' medical knowledge to investigate what drives the differences in the two discourses This expansive area of research is signi cant because when the qualitative experiences of healthcare workers and patients are not recognised as credible sources of knowledge, their social power to in uence public policy is diminished. These actors may be deprived of their entitled share of collective nancial and medical resources (Moes et al, 2020: 2)
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