News from the HPRU
Arts and Humanities Research Council funding
Together with a colleague at Nottingham, HPRU member Brian Brown has obtained AHRC funding to take forward work in the health humanities. This represents an innovative and more inclusive approach than has been found previously in the medical humanities and aims to include a variety of other health care disciplines as well as service users and informal carers. Following the success of the Madness and Literature Network (http://www.madnessandliterature.org), the AHRC will be funding an International Health Humanities Network which will build out into an exciting virtual resource for linking all arts and humanities disciplines with healthcare, health and wellbeing. At present a series of seminars is planned and an International Advisory Board is being established, as well as the forthcoming second conference in our Heath Humanities series in New York in 2012. http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/News/Events/Pages/SecondInternationalHealthHumanitiesConference.aspx
Recent reports
Mark Johnson has contributed to two reports. He contributed, alongside others, to a report of the Royal College of Psychiatry, called Minority ethnic communities and specialist learning disability services: as a member of the Faculty of the Psychiatry of Learning Disability Working Group. The report can be found here: http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/pdf/FR_LD_2%20for%20web.pdf
Mark also conducted a search of UK literature as a contrbution to a report by theEuropean Centre for Disease Prevention and Control entitled Improving HIV data comparability in migrant populations and ethnic minorities in EU/EEA/EFTA countries: findings from a literature review and expert panel. Stockholm.
http://ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications/Publications/1108_TER_Improving_HIV_data_comparability_in_migrants.pdf
NHS reform
In June Mark Johnson attended a meeting at the Department of Health with the NHS Future Forum organised by the Afiya Trust as part of the listening exercise for the 2011 Health and Social Care Bill.
Work on health inequalities
During much of 2011, Julie Fish was sharing insights from her current research on health inequalities to a range of audiences including through a research seminar the University of Bradford, a conference presentation at the University of Manchester and an online symposium of countries from the Pacific Rim who shared their perspectives on health inequalities and social work education. In addition, Julie, along with colleagues, met with Professor Sir Michael Marmot to discuss the contribution of social work to reducing health inequalities.
Conference presentation on health consumer groups
In June, Rob Baggott, was invited to give a paper at an international conference on self help and mutual aid in health at the University Magna Graecia, Catanzaro, Italy. His paper, written jointly with Kathryn Jones, on the subject of health consumer groups in the UK, was delivered to an audience of 250 academics and health professionals. The conference also hosted a meeting of ENCUPO, the international collaborative group for the study of health consumer and patients’ organisations (of which Rob Baggott and Kathryn Jones are founder members), which discussed future plans for research and dissemination in this field.
Publication
In July, Rob Baggott and Kathryn Jones had an article published in the prestigious journal, Social Science and Medicine. The article is on the topic of health consumer and patients’ organisation and their interest in public health issues, and reports the findings of a survey undertaken in the Summer of 2010. Baggott R., and Jones, K. (2011) ‘Prevention better than cure? Health Consumer and Patients’ Organisations and Public Health’ Social Science and Medicine 73(4), 530-4
Book Review
In October, a review of Rob Baggott’s Public Health Policy and Politics 2nd edition was published in the Journal of Social Policy. The review, by Linda Marks of Durham University, commented that the book ‘underlines the perennially contested nature of the boundaries of public health and forensically unpicks the political context of a plethora of policies and strategies related to population health’ and that ‘..the depth of detail and comprehensiveness of this book makes it an invaluable resource for students of public health and those interested in the political underbelly of public health policy.’ This follows an earlier review of the book by Professor Alan Maryon- Davis, the former President of the Faculty of Public Health, in Public Health Today (March 2011), who commended the book for its ‘forensic examination’ and ‘balanced approach’ of public health policy and stated that the book provides ‘a resource that will be appreciated by all with an interest in the policy and politics of health improvement...’
Systems of health workshop
Sally Ruane was invited to speak to health professionals and policy makers from Spain and Latin America in Bilbao, Spain, in October. Her presentation examined the evolution of the NHS and the current reforms and was the inaugural meeting in a series of regional workshops on systems of health and health policy organised by health professionals and academics in the Basque country.
2010/11
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
