[Involvement in a voluntary association in the field of cardiovascular disease prevention]

The progress of this research enables to consider the field of health from the angle of voluntary help by the involvement of an association of voluntary ill people in the field of the prevention of cardiovascular diseases. The evolution of the health system with scientific progress, ever-changing political scenes, currents of thought, interests at stake make that since the 50s, health and its standards have been considered from a biomedical angle by legitimizing the dominant position of experts. In this context, what is the place of the laymen in the management of the risk of arisen chronic disease? What are their representations of health? What appropriation do they make of the domestic work of health which tends to make them interiorize new standards and rules of life and modify their health behavior? Some conceptual and theoretical lights and the encounter in the field within an association in an anthropological position through immersion, participating observation at various demonstrations with a preventive aim and conversations led with ill or former ill volunteers put in light certain aspects of the problem. The investment of the volunteers makes sense and tends to come true around the concepts of donation, counter donation, socialization in a new health under the influence of the symbolism of the rites of passage and the testimony to work in the distribution of educational messages. The activity of the volunteer is transformed with a logic which is far from philanthropy. He becomes a mediatory health agent where some genuine work of organization, management, negotiation and training seems to fill the space little invested by experts in health prevention and education.