Widening the focus on medical misogyny
In recent months there has been a renewed focus on ‘medical misogyny’ with numerous reports highlighting the routine dismissal of female patients seeking healthcare, particularly for reproductive health conditions. A report by the Women and Equalitiies Committee (UK) in 2024...
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Babies: raw, nuanced, real
What this BBC drama gets right about recurrent miscarriage I heard about the new BBC drama Babies the week before it aired and was keen to watch it, not least because miscarriage is so rarely portrayed on screen – particularly...
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Healing beyond borders: Digital mental health support for refugees
Looking around a refugee camp in Somaliland, I saw silent mental health battles everywhere. So I decided to help. My understanding of trauma did not begin with a textbook or a diagnosis. It grew little by little over many years;...
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How does Decontextualised Risk Information change the GP/Patient Consultation?
A face-to-face consultation between a GP and their patient is an intimate, highly personal, and confidential encounter that, despite the rise of e-consults, remains at the heart of UK general practice. But it is changing fast. New technologies measuring and...
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Why Young Adult’s Loneliness is Political
In recent years, young adults (typically defined as age 16 – 25years) have become increasingly recognised as a group that are vulnerable to loneliness. Most research on young adult’s loneliness takes a psychological perspective and is concerned with individual and...
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Why women have to queue for the toilet
And what it says about how cities are designed Do you remember the last time you had to queue for a toilet? If several examples spring to mind, the chances are you were standing in the women’s line. Whether at theatres,...
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Co-producing local research priorities for drug and alcohol services
In 2019 Dame Carol Black was appointed by UK government to lead a major review examining: the ways that drugs fuel serious violence; treatment, recovery and prevention. The report emphasised that research in the field is lacking, underdeveloped and under-resourced...
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Outgunned Before Breakfast: Big Brand Advertising
Why Public Health Keeps Losing to Big Brand Advertising It’s 7:00 AM on a drizzly London morning. A seven-year-old sits at the breakfast table, eyes on the TV as he eats cereal. In minutes, he’s bombarded by cartoon mascots pushing...
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Developing skills pathways through community enrichment for disadvantaged children
Why we need a radical overhaul of our approach to the UK skills gap What is the UK skills gap? The recent announcement of the Government’s Youth Guarantee, ensuring all 18 to 21 year olds in England have access to...
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England now has a plan to end homelessness…
…here’s how to test whether it will work The UK has proved before that it can end homelessness. The Everyone In scheme during COVID lockdowns accommodated tens of thousands of people in emergency and supported housing, who would otherwise have continued...
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Shame, Stigma, and Self-Harm: Complicating Narratives
Over the last decade it’s been exciting to see a real groundswell in Sociology around the need to think carefully and critically about stigma. A brilliant example of this is the collection Recalibrating Stigma: Sociologies of Health and Illness edited...
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Why is Healthy Life Expectancy in decline?