War and conflict – what’s the role of medical sociology?
War and conflict are very much part of our global experience as we move into 2024. The conflicts in Ukraine and in Gaza are ongoing and prominent in Global North media and popular discourse. Other conflicts, such as in Syria...
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O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree, how lovely are your branches.
We have a running debate in our house about the relative benefits of real and fake Christmas trees. Each year for the past 25 years I have made my bid for a real tree. I used to argue for the...
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Around a million children in the UK are living in destitution
Around a million children in the UK are living in destitution – with harmful consequences for their development. Millions of people in the UK are unable to meet their most basic physical needs: to stay warm, dry, clean and fed....
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Myths about plastic pollution are leading to public confusion: here’s why
Does the prediction that there could be “more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050” concern you? How about reports that “we eat a credit card’s worth of plastic per week”? These are some of the “facts” about plastic...
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Politics, Economics and the Sociology of Health and Illness
The government’s politics increasingly drive the detailed organisation and rapid privatisation of healthcare. Government austerity policies and mismanagement of healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic have had a great impact on the nation’s health. There are less than half the number...
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Repeat child removals: structural inequality and iatrogenic harm
One in four birth mothers who have a child taken into care in England will re-appear in care proceedings within seven years. Women in this situation have experienced structural disadvantage in multiple domains including socio-economic deprivation, histories of trauma and...
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Climate Crisis, Denial and the World Burning
In the film ‘Don’t Look Up’ (2021), a planet-killing comet is on a direct collision course with Earth. Distraught scientists are depicted as struggling unsuccessfully to get politicians, the media, and the public to believe them and act to avert...
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People with intellectual disability are often diagnosed with cancer when it is already well advanced
Many people with intellectual disability are diagnosed with cancer when it has already spread (metastasized) and the odds of survival are lower. Intellectual disability is a lifelong condition that occurs before adulthood where people have a reduced ability to understand new or complex information,...
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The two child benefit cap and the power of the financial markets
The two child benefit cap affects an estimated 1.5 million children across the country. Recent research suggests that as many as one in four children in some of England and Wales’s poorest constituencies are in families left at least £3,000...
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Pandemic Preparedness, Recovery, and the Vital Role of Social Science
As has become abundantly clear over the last few years, pandemics are social as well as biomedical. Their effects ripple through societies and communities, the result of – and further affecting – societal processes. Consequently, the social sciences have much...
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Self harm care: A community consultation
Everyone deserves access to safe and affirming care. The broader literature and anecdotal evidence suggest that safe and affirming care is often absent when it comes to self-harm. In 2020 we (Bathsheba, Courtney, and Veronica) co-founded Make Space, a user-led...
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The fragile worker: stigma, illness and disability in the contemporary workplace