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The embodiment of health identities is a growing area of interest. Questions posed in this literature include: how important is the body in our understandings/experiences of health, how are everyday definitions of health and self embodied despite chronic illness, and how do social relations influence these interpretations? Mindful of such questions, this paper draws on a qualitative study of mild to moderate asthma among young people in Ireland. In-depth interviews were undertaken with 31 respondents aged between 5 and 17, including boys ( n = 15) and girls ( n = 16) from different class and ethnic backgrounds. Core themes included: the importance of play, physical activity and sport; diet/nutrition; and physical appearance. Asthma sometimes presented challenges in relation to specific domains, notably strenuous physical activity, though in many other respects its potential impact was discursively minimised. Attentive to various modalities of the lived body, we illustrate how health identities are negotiated among young people diagnosed with a chronic illness. Connections are also made with the sociology of childhood and (ill) health, which views young people as active agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary health policy increasingly positions responsibility for the management of health with the individual which reflects newer neo-liberal discourses of health. Such an approach can be seen as problematic in the context of men's health, with men tending to be seen as largely 'irresponsible' towards their own health. This paper addresses this question by drawing on qualitative data on how men conceptualise responsibility for health. Whilst the desire to be responsible for health was borne by most of the men in the study, this was not always reflected in practice. There was also evidence of strategies that men adopted for either divesting themselves of responsibility for health or for legitimising lack of responsibility. In some instances, acting 'irresponsibly' was what defined participants as 'real men'. The implications of these findings for men's health policy are discussed with specific reference to the recent publication of Ireland's National Men's Health Policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]