Becoming a scientific society: making the living laboratory work for public services in Wales
Government departments and their frontline staff are constantly experimenting with new policies and different methods of delivering public services to try to discover better ways of doing things. For example, it’s thought that some health boards in Wales are now...
More…
2015: Time for politicians to make a healthy New Year’s resolution
It’s that time of year. Millions of British people resolve to change. Quit smoking. Eat better. Exercise more. Drink less. Breaking a New Year’s resolution is as much a British tradition as making one though. So what can we learn...
More…
Visibility and invisibility in a leaderless NHS
Alex Stevenson wrote a piece on the politics.co.uk blog last week where he talked about leadership in the post-reform NHS. He reviewed the findings of a recent Public Administration Select Committee, detailing a lack of accountability across UK healthcare provision,...
More…
Detoxing Schools: Do lotteries for school places offer the best medicine?
The best social science book I have read this year is Toxic Schools, Bowen Paulle’s account of urban high-school-life in New York and Amsterdam. Paulle demonstrates how divisive educational systems that segregate poor, black and other ethnic minority students into...
More…
The Bad Patient
Questions of good patients and bad patients mean different things to professionals and policy makers. Is patient empowerment something tangible or are patients simply a pawn between these competing interests?
More…
“Maybe we just need to be a little bit more… sexy?”: What is ‘public health advocacy’ and should health inequalities researchers be doing it?
Health inequalities in the UK are a major challenge, and they are growing. The apparent failure of policy efforts to reduce these inequalities often prompts calls for more public health ‘advocacy’ from researchers in the field. It is argued, first,...
More…
Q: “When is an NHS provider not a qualified provider?” A: “When it’s a willing provider…”