How many Zikas will it take?
Gradually the Public Health gaze is turning towards the minor acute events that trigger serious long term illnesses and chronic conditions. “About time too”, say many campaigners. For social scientists, it is very interesting to observe major changes in medical...
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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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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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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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The Volkswagon scandal: making air pollution visible
It is difficult to have missed the recent ‘Volkswagon scandal’. The US Environmental Protection Agency claimed that Volkswagen rigged emissions tests by fitting a device that reduced emissions of Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) during testing. By law, all vehicles have to...
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Chemsex
Made for VICE by directors William Fairman and Max Gogarty, Chemsex is an eighty-minute documentary film about drug-fuelled gay sex parties, the men involved, and the risks they take with their health. While the stories and images of injecting drug...
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Why cutting spending on public health is a false economy
Public health spending is under threat. This despite the fact that increasing investment in prevention is the foundation of a sustainable NHS. Cutting these budgets is alarmingly short-termist and indicates a fundamental failure of the government to understand the changing nature...
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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...
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Public Health and Behaviour Change: from naïve sociology to naïve psychology
One of the age-old problems for ‘public health’ has always been how to get people to adopt more healthy behaviour change. How can citizens be persuaded to vaccinate themselves, eat healthier food or avoid obvious harms such as smoking? Of...
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Neoliberal epidemics: the spread of austerity, obesity, stress and inequality
Within the small local authority of Stockton-on-Tees, where one of us lives and works, the difference in male life expectancy between the most and least deprived areas is 17 years. This is comparable to the difference in average male life expectancy between the...
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Measuring Ideology
The Work Capability Assessment (WCA), introduced in 2007 by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) under the last Labour government, is likely to form a key component in the current Conservative government’s commitment to reducing the UK welfare bill...
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Do speed bumps kill?