A&E crisis is a symptom, not a cause
Contrary to popular belief, attendances have stayed static since 2003 in what the Department of Health calls type 1 units – the big hospital-based A&E departments. Indeed, not a week passes without a news story about A&E departments: seven threatened...
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Manufacturing perfect debtors: a comment on the UK debt industries
The growing issue of personal debt (the so-called debt crisis) is more and more being represented as an issue of individual financial capability and responsibility. Problems of personal debt are constructed as something that can be remedied through improved access to financial management...
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‘Hard Times’ in The Archers at Christmas
It is often said that if Charles Dickens were writing now it would be for a popular soap opera perhaps as a script-writer for BBC radio 4 serial The Archers. John Yorke described soaps as ‘modern morality plays’; the latest...
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Age of Sexual Consent – is it a Public Health issue anyway?
Professor John Ashton, president of the Faculty of Public Health, has suggested that the Government consider lowering the age of sexual consent from 16 to 15. He has certainly put the cat amongst the political pigeons (which is fun to...
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Ethics at the coalface
Two different research papers caught my eye this week, and for once both were open for anyone to read. Drawing on studies in very different places – a neuro-degenerative research centre in the UK (Brosnan et al.), and a research...
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From “doctor knows best” to “market knows best”
We are consistently told by this government that the public sector is wasteful and inefficient and that the private sector offers much better value for money for the ‘Great British Taxpayer’. The evidence for this is scant to say the...
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Obamacare, Individualism v Solidarity, and the NHS
The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) came into force in the USA in June 2012 to regulate health insurance and curtail some of the worst practices engaged in by the for profit health care industry. The aim was to make affordable...
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Surgery for breakfast
A friend, recently returned from a city-break in Budapest, reported it wonderful in every respect. The only shock was the hotel breakfast menu: instead of the anticipated eggs benedict, croissants and coffee, she was confronted with dental implants, tear-drop breasts...
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Selling Stigma: Mental Illness and the Media
In the same week that we celebrate World Mental Health Day, the Sun newspaper ran a front page headline which read “1,200 killed by mental patients”. The statistics were written in lurid ‘blood red’ with much smaller writing below which stated...
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The English school food plan needs a few more ingredients
Schools are a key battleground for public health professionals and policy-makers trying to improve young people’s diet in the UK and internationally. The Department for Education recently released a new English School Food Plan (SFP) which was produced by the founders...
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On being involved
Our son was born last November with a cleft lip and palate. Since then we have learned a lot. We know how to squeeze milk rhythmically into his mouth; massage scar tissue and deliver pain medications with the minimum of...
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Letter from America