Public Health and the problem with class
Medicine, as a profession, does not recruit equitably from the UK’s population. This matters because working-class young people do not have equal chances of becoming doctors. But it also matters how public health interventions are designed and delivered. All too...
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The Fall of NHS Dentistry: A service in crisis.
There is a crisis in NHS Dentistry. A survey of NHS dental practices last year found that 91% of NHS practices were not accepting new adult patients, rising to 98% in ‘the South West, North West and Yorkshire and the...
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Heatwaves are social murder
Heat kills. We have known this for some time. Whenever a heatwave occurs, an increase in excess deaths occurs. The European heatwaves of 2003 witnessed an excess of 75,000 deaths, with 15,000 of those occurring in France alone. The World...
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Pile the bodies high
The UK government always claimed their response to COVID-19 was “led by science”. As both government and the science community descend into a quagmire of public spats, what can we learn about the dangers of coupling politics with science? The...
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Foreign aid during COVID: Whose suffering matters to Rishi Sunak?
A billion-pound cut from the UK’s international development budget in his new spending review, reducing aid down from 0.7% to 0.5% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) because of the COVID pandemic is both short-sighted and ill-advised.
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In it together or socially distant?
COVID-19 is presented as an equal opportunities virus. It does not discriminate and can strike down anyone on an almost random basis. Witness the Insta postings by Madonna speaking from a rose petal filled bath and by David Geffen aboard...
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A room without books…
“A room without books is like a body without a soul.” Marcus Tullius Cicero Reading books is good for our health. Particularly our mental health. Alongside improving literacy, knowledge about the world around us, emotional intelligence and providing relaxation, studies suggest...
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Why no talk of an inequality emergency?
We hear much talk now of a climate emergency. As I was revising a talk I frequently give on ‘global health in an unequal world’, I realised that there is no talk of an inequality emergency, either globally or close...
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International Women’s Day 2019
International women’s day is celebrated on the 8th March every year. The day has its origins with the Socialist Party of America that organised a women’s day in February 1909, followed by the suggestion of an annual day. On March 8,...
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Public troubles and private lives – how could ‘iHomecare’ be the answer to the social care crisis?
There is a permanent contradiction in the sphere of health and social care in that one person’s home is another person’s workplace, such that people’s private lives are intertwined with public responses to those lives (i.e. the state provision of...
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The Only Way We’ll Get Change Is Through Involving People In Change
All the evidence suggests that current social policy is failing miserably. It is increasing poverty and inequality, undermining social cohesion and personal relations, spreading insecurity and damaging and stigmatising some of the most marginalised groups in society, like disabled people...
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Pandemic Preparedness, Recovery, and the Vital Role of Social Science