Whither the political will for social justice in public health?
For this episode, I’m in the central London office of Sir Michael Marmot, a legend in public health and social justice.
He’s been waging international battle for a fairer, healthier society for 40 years. Sir Michael was knighted for his work bridging the gap between publlc health and clinical medicine in posts too numerous to mention.
On his Wikipedia page, I counted 25 honourary degrees and awards. On Google Scholar’s most-cited list, Freud is third, Einstein 55th and Sir Michael, number 59.
We discuss what’s happened since his landmark review of health inequalities in England in 2010, the reasons for the enduring inequity in health in the UK and US, why the rate of increase in life expectancy is slowing, especially for the poorest women, how governments fail to muster the political will to prioritise public health, the scourge of child poverty, the desperation of the working poor, the staggering cost of childcare in the UK, Brexit, our real-life version of Aldous Huxley’s savage satire Brave New World, the fixes he’s proposing and the promise of ‘Marmot Cities’ such as Coventry, Stoke, Bristol and others.
Links
- The UCL Institute of Health Equity
- Sir Michael’s bio
- Sir Michael’s latest book The Health Gap – The Challenge of an Unequal World
- Sir Michael on Wikipedia
- Fabulous, must-watch keynote Sir Michael gave in December 2018 at UC Berkeley
- Guardian Healthcare Network Nov 2017 – What can Britain learn from the US on links between economic distress and poor health?
- The Lancet 2015 – The health gap: the challenge of an unequal world
- The Guardian – The Thatcher effect: what changed and what stayed the same
- Sir Michael on Twitter
Thoughts?