Health and Social Care

The authors of two new Rapid Response titles on COVID and co-production question why the expansion of co-production in research and policy development has not found its way into pandemic response. They call for co-produced approaches as a way of working that can help address the social wrongs we now need to right. …Read more

Leland Harper, contributor to the new issue of Global Discourse on the politics of fear, charts the marked differences in the effects of COVID-19 on Black and White America and explains why it’s essential to use race-based data in developing policy responses to the pandemic. …Read more

Natalie Darko, author of 'Engaging Black and Minority Ethnic Groups in Health Research', warns us to look more carefully before vilifying groups as vaccine-hesitant. She calls for research into their concerns about the vaccine and health care generally to be much more collaborative, involving the communities themselves.…Read more

Sarah Bird, Managing Editor, introduces the new Global Social Challenges Journal, a new, interdisciplinary, non-profit, open access journal, with a mission to question, explore and navigate our way through the social aspects of the challenges that face us.…Read more

Kate Hunt and Amanda Friesen outline the ways both sides of Ireland’s abortion policy debate framed masculinity, in order to encourage men to vote, questioning whether this threatens to undermine broader emancipatory goals.…Read more

Coinciding with the publication of his new book ‘COVID-19 and Risk’, Andy Alaszewski considers whether the strategy of prioritising the most vulnerable for vaccinations is the most effective one. …Read more

Jane Lewis, author of 'The Challenge of Controlling COVID-19', explains the failures to control the first wave of COVID-19, focusing on the test and trace system and the part played by longstanding structural problems in public health, as well as the government’s reactive, inconsistent and highly-centralised approach.…Read more

Bob Hudson, author of 'Clients, Consumers or Citizens?', writes that, on the face of it, the new NHS white paper’s recoiling from the primacy of competition and markets warrants a warm welcome. Yet reactions have been underwhelming because there is remarkably little detail on how this ambitious mission is going to work.…Read more

Joshua Rozenberg, author of 'Enemies of the People?', discusses whether any UK court would give the government's maximum 10-year prison sentence for lying about where you have travelled from.…Read more

Jonathan Wistow follows up on his article from last year to explain how COVID-19 represents a certain continuity in the operation of the social contract established in response to it. He looks at state intervention, health inequality, the ‘chumocracy’ and private sector contracts. …Read more