Caring for Carers
Did you know that the 6th and 12th of June was Carers Week? A range of events and activities taking place all across the UK celebrating the work of carers and raising awareness of the challenges they face. It is...
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On Brexit, Hamsters & Hungry Pythons!
As we move towards the referendum on membership of the EU, British citizens face a bewildering array of claims and counterclaims. The conventional wisdom is that the voting public will favour the ‘status quo bias‘. Unfortunately, we seem to be...
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Scarred for life
At a research meeting last week, a general practitioner who offers health checks to young, unaccompanied refugees, described his work. He had interviewed 44 young men from Afghanistan who all, report themselves to be in good health, with no special...
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Improving health? Start local
Ideas about place based systems of care are currently fashionable in policy circles. I have previously written about initiativitis, (plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose’ or ‘here we go again’) but I am resisting the cynical temptation to...
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A ‘tour de force’ of obfuscation
A note on Sustainability and Transformation Plans in your brand new NHS Obfuscation is the obscuring of intended meaning in communication, making the message confusing, willfully ambiguous, or harder to understand. It may be intentional or unintentional (although the former...
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Lights out for health?
Across the UK, the lights are going out. As local authorities seek to cut costs, street lights are being turned off or dimmed at night – with much local media concern about what this means for safety. But is less...
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Parkrun
Every Saturday in countries across the world groups of amateur and less amateur runners get together to run 2 or 5 km around a park. In 2004, Paul Sinron developed Parkrun, and the first event involved 13 people running in...
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Domestic Violence in the Archers: Gender, Mental Health and Victim Blame
When Helen Titchener finally took a knife to abusive husband, Rob, there was a national outpouring of relief from Archers fans, who had become increasingly frustrated with the long running, apparently endless subjugation of Helen. Others had long switched off,...
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Sugar, poverty and taxation
As social scientists, we can bring a unique perspective to a debate dominated by politicians, ‘food campaigners’, public health and industry. I don’t know if self-appointed sugar experts Jamie Oliver (TV chef) and George Osbourne (political chancellor) have a lot...
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WRAGs to ‘riches’: Closing the disability employment gap
Iain Duncan Smith (IDS) recently resigned from his position as the Work and Pensions Secretary having seemingly suffered a delayed bout of morality. In his resignation letter he explained that he felt the cuts proposed in #Budget2016 were ‘a compromise...
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School Holiday Hunger
The cost of the school holidays makes them a crunch point for families paying the price of austerity politics. Children who benefit from free school lunches are often going hungry once their school shuts for the holidays. The cost of...
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‘Corporate Wellness’: blurring the lines