JULIEANN THOMAS March 1, 2022 Rear Admiral Eric Jones Assistant Commandant for Human Resources (CG-1) United States Coast GuardWashington, DC 20593 United States of America Dear Admiral Jones, My name is JulieAnn Thomas. My husband, CDR * * * * (ret.) served for 20 years in the US Coast Guard (CG) as a cutterman, an…
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Understanding Covid Vaccine Resistance
Sheba Mohammid and Daniel Miller Right now, Trinidad and Tobago are suffering amongst the highest death rate from Covid in the world. As small islands, everyone seems to know people who have died. According to a Trinidadian doctor specialising in this field one reason for this is co-morbidity with diabetes, obesity and hypertension. Diabetes is…
A letter for the 97%
ISOBEL THORLEY Dear Elizabeth Truss, Nadine Dorris and Priti Patel, As the Minister for Women and Equalities, Minister of State Mental Health, and Home Secretary, I am writing to you because you have the responsibility to tackle an issue that your government has failed to acknowledge, namely the lack of gender-based-approaches to policy implementation during…
A Letter to Matt Hancock
URSULA WHITE February 2021 Dear Secretary of State, I am writing to express my concern on discovering that, as of February 2021, Operose Health has acquired AT Medics, a company that currently has contracts to operate 49 GP London surgeries (Lacobucci 2021). Operose Health was created in January 2020 as a subsidiary of Centene, a…
Letter to Jens Spahn
JASMIN SIMAO AJAYI Dear Mr. Spahn, I am a German citizen from Munich, currently in my final year of studying Anthropology at the University College London (UCL). I am writing to you today to address an issue that has come to my attention recently: the disproportionate effect of Covid-19 on economically disadvantaged and minority ethnic people in…
Beyond the data: Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on BAME groups
PETER BICCAREGUI Calling for a follow up report. On the 5th April 2020, almost a year ago to the day I’m writing this letter, Belly Mujinga died at only 47 of COVID-19 (Croxford 2020). She was spat on by a man who claimed to have COVID-19. The CPS deemed that there was insufficient evidence to take the case to court, as the man provided a…
It’s Not A Sin: improving HIV/AIDS education in the UK
PIA KEELEY-JOHNSON Dear Gavin Williamson, I am a queer woman living in London who, like more than 18.9 million people1 who sat down to watch Russell Davies’ hit show It’s A Sin over the last two months, just received the best HIV/AIDS education of my 23 years of life from a TV drama. I was not totally ignorant to…
Eating Disorders, Education, and TikTok
EMILIE THOMPSON 28th February 2021 Dear Mrs Murdoch, Please let me express my enormous gratitude for the work you and your team continue to conduct in the face of the current pandemic. The NHS are demonstrating unwavering resilience and dedication that is nothing short of inspiring. As a postgraduate student from UCL, I write in response…
An Epidemic of Loneliness
PEPE WEISCHER Dear Mr Spahn, The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has strained the capacity of the German health system in unprecedented ways, but it seems to me that one crucial aspect of lockdown measures has been profoundly undermined: the loss of social cohesion and mental health support for children and adolescents. By no means do I…
A Letter for Malcolm Reed
TANYA SHARMA Dear Professor Malcolm Reed, (Lead Co-Chair of the Medical Schools Council), I am a medical student in the UK writing to you to discuss the teaching we have had on Social Determinants of Health as part of our medical education and how it may be beneficial for this to be further developed and…
A Letter to Tedros A. Ghebreyesus
AY NASSIMOLDINA Dear Dr Tedros A. Ghebreyesus, The world is in a vulnerable state right now, and we have trusted you with the World Health Organization to lead us through a global health crisis. However, it is so vital not to relax or neglect health issues that might be veiled with seemingly optimal solutions. I appreciate and…
A Letter to Andrew Selous
SHOLA AJAO Dear Mr Andrew Selous, It is unfortunate that I find myself writing to you again during these unprecedented times. As you may recall, I wrote July of last year concerning the case of Belly Mujinga, a black woman, a victim of a racially motivated attack, who later died after being spat on whilst working…
Fighting Inequality by Improving NHS Dental and Oral Care
MAXINE PEPPER 22nd March 2021 Dear Sir Stevens, RE: Fighting inequality by improving NHS dental and oral care The COVID-19 pandemic brought the discourse on health back to the heart of society. I personally cannot remember ever talking about health and illness prevention more than during the previous 12 months. Given your long list of recent media appearances, I believe you must feel the same. However, my anthropology…
Advocacy Letters: Anthropological Calls for Public and Global Health Change
Series Introduction CARRIE RYAN For the next few weeks, the UCL Medical Anthropology blog will run a special series called ‘Advocacy Letters: Anthropological Calls for Public and Global Health Change.’ This series will showcase nine Advocacy Letters written by UCL anthropology undergraduates and postgraduates. In these letters, students use anthropological insights to advocate for change on a variety of health-related topics, including, for example, dental care, loneliness, and vaccine hesitancy. These Advocacy Letters…
Covid-19 and Vaccine Inequalities in South Africa: The Second Year
Lerato Coulter, Nunu Dlamini, Jonathan Govender, Sarah-Jayne Du Plessis, Ryan Harries, Khanyisile Maphalala, Dineo Mtetwa, Katso Sebina, Hannah Sunpath, Storm Theunissen and Lenore Manderson University of the Witwatersrand Twelve months after it all began here, sanitisers, physical distancing and masked guards had become just part of the everyday, and we had lost count of deaths…
“Not the Chinese, I’m a Pfizer girl!” The covert politics of pharmaceutical branding in Covid struck Hungary
ARIEL BINETH HUNGARY. The country has one of the highest death rates of COVID-19 globally.1 Hospitals are filled with ICU patients at some places outnumbering staff 5:1.2 Nurses and doctors struggle with physical burnout, infrastructural breakdown, and government crackdown. The shadow of Prime Minister Viktor Orban floats above the pandemic by obstructing statistical transparency and…
Vaccine envy and vaccine snobbery – why we look a gift horse in the mouth when it comes to the Covid-19 vaccine
MARIA LARRAIN The vaccine rollout has been well-underway in the UK since Margaret Keenan was the first person in the world to receive the Pfizer Covid-19 jab in December 2020, a week before her 91st birthday. It marked the start of what Health Secretary Matt Hancock called “the fightback against our common enemy, the coronavirus”….
Troubled Togetherness: Visually Impaired People’s Unsettling and Tiresome Journey towards Community Belonging
ANNAMARIA DALL’ANESE The word ‘community’ has heart-warming connotations of mutual support and reciprocal understanding. The sense of belonging that stems from being integrated into a social world perfused with care and empathy is seen as so universally desirable that nothing hints at the difficulties that becoming part of a specific community may entail. The focus…
PHOTO ESSAY: SHELTER IN PLACE
AMANDA NESCI For many, home is seen as a place you come back to, retreat, relax, decompress. How does this relationship change when our homes become our whole world? Due to the shelter in place orders as result of the COVID-19 outbreak, our homes have become much more: offices, gyms, classrooms, studios, bars. Windowsills become…
Bioethics as a Mediator in Times of Pandemic
CARLA ALICIA SUÁREZ FÉLIX During the last months, as the world has been marked by the pandemic, there has been much discussion about the role that bioethics could have as a guide for decision making at times when human life is in crisis. Among the flow of academic reflections on the current state of humanity…