Originally published as a letter in the BMJ, 24 March 2020: BMJ 2020; 368 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m1187 As a public health physician, I am increasingly concerned about the apparent failure to implement fundamental public health measures to tackle the covid-19 outbreak—specifically, community contact tracing, clinical…
Blog
We need hands-on public health expertise to tackle COVID-19
The government has released its scientific evidence, which sheds light on the fiasco and the catastrophe that is unfolding economically, socially, and health wise. It also highlights the lack of public health input and the decimation of the speciality and…
The proposed National Health Service Reinstatement Bill, July 2018 – explanatory notes
These notes are intended to explain the Bill that was provided to Eleanor Smith, MP for Wolverhampton South West, for presentation in the House of Commons on 11th July 2018. [download pdf] Overview In short, the Bill proposes to fully…
Judicial review judgement: the campaign moves on
Today the High Court handed down its judgement on the judicial review we brought against the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and NHS England on their introduction of Accountable Care Organisations (ACOs). We had originally brought our…
Open letter to Jeremy Hunt on the 69th anniversary of the NHS
This first appeared on the Huffington Post 05 July 2017 Dear Mr Hunt The 69th anniversary today of the National Health Service is a timely but sad occasion on which to draw your attention to the end of the service…
The abolition of the NHS in England
This first appeared in the Huffington Post UK on 14 March 2016 Written with Peter Roderick, co-author of the NHS Bill On Friday, the cross party NHS Bill returned to the Commons for its second reading (watch the video). The…
Note on children’s rugby injury data
Listeners to More or Less on BBC Radio 4 have asked where I got the data to make the points that rugby players up to the age of 18 or 19 had a 28% chance of getting injured over a…
Why I wrote to the government to ask them to remove the tackle from school rugby and put in place injury surveillance
(This blog was first published on Better Health For All (the blog of the Faculty of Public Health) on 08 March 2015) On 2nd March 2016, along with 70 other academics, doctors, and public health professionals, I wrote an open…
Risk of privatisation of the Scottish NHS in the event of a no vote
The Coalition Government abolished the public NHS in England when it passed the Health and Social Care Act in 2012. This Act didn’t directly affect the NHS in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, but could have grave long-term consequences for…
Protecting confidential patient information and promoting public health research
Summary In December 2013, NHS England directed the Health and Social Care Information Centre to establish a system for uploading and linking GP patient coded data with identifiers, using its new powers in Part 9 of the Health and Social…