A Blog About Health In Times Of Austerity

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People with intellectual disability are often diagnosed with cancer when it is already well advanced

People with intellectual disability are often diagnosed with cancer when it is already well advanced

Many people with intellectual disability are diagnosed with cancer when it has already spread (metastasized) and the odds of survival are lower. Intellectual disability is a lifelong condition that occurs before adulthood where people have a reduced ability to understand new or complex information,... More…
The two child benefit cap and the power of the financial markets

The two child benefit cap and the power of the financial markets

The two child benefit cap affects an estimated 1.5 million children across the country. Recent research suggests that as many as one in four children in some of England and Wales’s poorest constituencies are in families left at least £3,000... More…
Pandemic Preparedness, Recovery, and the Vital Role of Social Science

Pandemic Preparedness, Recovery, and the Vital Role of Social Science

As has become abundantly clear over the last few years, pandemics are social as well as biomedical. Their effects ripple through societies and communities, the result of – and further affecting – societal processes. Consequently, the social sciences have much... More…
Self harm care: A community consultation

Self harm care: A community consultation

Everyone deserves access to safe and affirming care. The broader literature and anecdotal evidence suggest that safe and affirming care is often absent when it comes to self-harm. In 2020 we (Bathsheba, Courtney, and Veronica) co-founded Make Space, a user-led... More…
Losing more than we ever had: The NHS staffing crisis, 4-year degrees and what will be lost

Losing more than we ever had: The NHS staffing crisis, 4-year degrees and what will be lost

We constantly hear that the NHS is in crisis. Most recently on the news agenda has been the NHS staffing crisis with a chronic lack of doctors, nurses, technicians and many areas of the NHS workforce. The Conservative government’s latest... More…
Rearticulating material inequalities as spatial inequalities (and how to stop it)

Rearticulating material inequalities as spatial inequalities (and how to stop it)

In order to assess the current policy approach to addressing inequalities, it is necessary to think critically about the ‘levelling up’ policy context in the UK. To do this, we need to think about changes to dominant ways in which... More…
“The Emperor’s New Clothes”: health inequalities in ethnic minority communities

“The Emperor’s New Clothes”: health inequalities in ethnic minority communities

The classic children’s story ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’, catches the imagination with its allegory of logical fallacies and fear of and failure to criticise. Still, it is the way it classically embodies society’s seditious reticence, a state where everyone refuses... More…
Public Health and the problem with class

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... More…
Artificial Intelligence and Medical Sociology

Artificial Intelligence and Medical Sociology

It is fair to say that there is growing concern about the use of artificial intelligence in almost all facets of our lives. In universities, a lot of this worry centres on the potential use of AI by students and... More…
The right to convalesce

The right to convalesce

An extended period of fatigue is a feature of COVID-19, lingering and depleting the body and the mind long after the acute symptoms of infection have come and gone.  Fatigue is not just present in what we refer to as... More…
The Fall of NHS Dentistry: A service in crisis.

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... More…
Purity and danger in pandemic public health

Purity and danger in pandemic public health

A socio-historical take on fear messaging Public health strategies to encourage compliance and behaviour change during the pandemic have been criticised for applying behavioural theories like “nudge theory” to induce fear. The Independent Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours (SPI-B)... More…