Normality, risk and the future: Implicit communication of threat in health surveillance

Abstract

In the practice of health surveillance, health professionals have to cope with the task of communicating outcomes of tests and measurements, as well as counselling individuals about present and future threats to their own or their children's health. Research in this field has shed some light on the 'language of risk' and its implications for how the individual understands and deals with health in everyday life. Here, we want to further this exploration of the language of risk and to discuss the meaning of risk, normality and deviance. We focus on the implicit or explicit introduction and interpretation of threat in the communication between health professionals and patients in two programmes of health surveillance: child health surveillance and surveillance of 40-year-old men. Common themes in these two versions of health surveillance are discussed in relation to the meaning of risk, normality and threats for the future.