Medical Anthropology at UCL

Paying more attention to long-term caregivers in contemporary China

CHENGYUE PENG (to No. 57 An Ding Men Wai Da Jie, Dong Cheng District, Beijing) Dear Ms Sun: I am writing to advocate more concern for long-term caregivers, whose labour has been undervalued and underpaid in and out of the family in today’s rapidly ageing China. I hope you can take some action as the…

Letter of concern regarding the UK’s Criminal Justice System and its handling of Rape and Serious Sexual Assault cases, with regards to Operation Soteria’s one year review.

MACKENZIE DEARSLEY Letter Directed To: The Rt Hon Suella Braverman KC MP, Home Security & MP for Fareham Government representative of Home Office’s Operation Soteria initiative. Trigger Warning: Rape and Serious Sexual Offense, a Letter of Concern Dear Rt Hon Suella Braverman, My name is Mackenzie Dearsley. I am a 27-year-old Anthropologist currently studying…

A Letter to the Secretary of Health and Social Care

ELLA ADENIKE ODUTOYE House of CommonsLondonSW1A 0AA Dear Steve Barclay, Gender bias is an issue that has burdened health care services for decades, as you said when announcing the women’s health strategy in 2022.1 It presents as ‘under representation of women in health studies, the trivialisation of women’s complaints, and discrimination in the awarding of…

Decolonising the medical curriculum: how do we get students involved?

LAUREN PEREIRA-GREENE 134 74 Huntley Street Building UCL Medical School London WC1E 6AU Dear Professor Faye Gishen, I am a third-year medical student, currently completing an intercalated degree in Medical Anthropology. I am writing to express concern around the disengagement between some medical students and efforts to decolonise the medical curriculum. The meaning of ‘decolonisation’…

A call to redress the attitudes and approaches to PMS in the UK

NANO QUIRKE-BAKRADZE To the Chief Executive of Health Education England, Dr Navina Evans 4 Stewart House 32 Russell Square WC1B 5DN 2nd April 2023 Dear Dr Navina Evans, I am writing to you to address my concern on the attitudes and approach to pre-menstrual syndrome (PMS). PMS is a syndrome where women experience a…

A Letter to the National Medical Commission of India: Improving doctor-patient relationships.

ANANYA CHOYAL To Dr Suresh Chandra Sharma Chairperson of the National Medical Commission Pocket-14, Sector – 8, Dwarka Phase – 1 New Delhi 110077 India The National Medical Commission (NMC) act of 2020 sets to reform the medical education sector. The act states that the commission would develop “competency based dynamic curriculum at undergraduate level,”…

The Hidden Toll of the Pandemic: Adolescent Social Isolation and Its Relevance as of Today

FAYEZA AHMED To Professor Chris Whitty   Chief Medical Advisor and Expert Advisor  Department of Health and Social Care   39 Victoria Street, London  SW1H 0EU  Dear Professor Chris Whitty, I am writing to express my concern about the ongoing issue of social isolation due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. As a Medical Anthropology student, my aim…

Does Data Really Save Lives? Considerations in Digitising Health

SERENE LIM To: Simon Bolton, CEO of NHS Digital Boar Lane, Leeds, West Yorkshire, LS1 6AE Dear Mr. Bolton, “Data saves lives” has played a central role in NHS messaging since the pandemic and continues to be a driving factor behind the NHS’ digitisation initiatives. Whilst I applaud the forward thinking and acceptance of necessary…

Introduction to the Third Annual Advocacy Letter Series

CARRIE RYAN In the coming weeks, the third annual Advocacy Letter Series will feature 22 student letters that call for change on a wide range of health topics, including ageing care, sexual assault response, and moral injury amongst medical professionals. These student letters were written this year during the module I teach at UCL called…

Reclaiming relationships and thinking differently about people in healthcare systems: reflections on insider-fieldwork, access and inclusion

SARAH YARDLEY Instead of trying to construct healthcare systems that don’t rely on people knowing each other, our energies would be better spent focused on creating mechanisms that facilitate relational working through equitable opportunities for people to connect with each other. I wonder what your reaction to reading the above statement is? By people, I…

Treading softly while jumping through hoops: ethnographic adventures in pursuit of palliative medication work-as-done in hospice, hospital and at home

DR SALLY-ANNE FRANCIS & DR SARAH YARDLEY “I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” (W.B.Yeats) “A rapid, focused ethnography will be conducted using a cross-sectional approach,” we said. It sounds so neat and simple. Yet in this compact statement there are two parallel stories of navigating…

Reflecting on reflexivity: A practical example of reporting your reflexive practice

DR JESSICA REES As distinguished by Chiseri-Strater (1996) “to be reflective does not demand an ‘other,’ while to be reflexive demands both another and some self- conscious awareness of the process of self-scrutiny” (p. 130). If knowledge reflects the identity of its producers (Haraway, 1991) then it is important for researchers to acknowledge their influence…

Living with multiple health conditions in an East-London borough: early findings from a participatory photography project

ESCA VAN BLARIKOM Multimorbidity in the UK Historically, biomedicine focused on single disease categories. As a result, many of our current clinical guidelines are almost exclusively focused on managing single conditions. Considering that in the UK, people with multiple health conditions make up most primary healthcare encounters (Cassell et al. 2018), these approaches urgently require…

Rapid ethnographies in the NHS

STEPHANIE KUMPUNEN Long-form ethnography is a long-term investment…but rapid ethnography can help sometimes Traditional long-form ethnography on health and care services has proven essential to understanding the social and cultural aspects of illness and care provision. As a research approach for quality improvement, ethnography has been described as able to help us to identify conditions…

Early Career Ethnographers of the NHS: Series Introduction

REBECCA IRONS Social Science and Humanities research with and on the NHS has never been more urgent than in a post-pandemic context. However, interdisciplinary collaboration with health services presents particular issues ranging from practicalities of access to expectations and differing disciplinary approaches between the clinical and the social/humanities. Being a long-time Latin Americanist myself, I…

Modernizing the US Coast Guard’s Miscarriage Leave Policy

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…

Redressing Transgender Healthcare in the UK

KATERINA DOWNING University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT 12/05/2022 FAO: Cass Review Team NHS England PO Box 16738 Redditch B97 9PT Dear Dr. Cass, I came across the “Independent review of gender identity services for children and young people”[i] while following the appeal of the 2020 ruling that prevented under-16’s consenting to hormone…

An Open Letter to the American Obesity Foundation

VICTORIA ANTONIOU Dear Ms. Okon, I would like to begin this letter by acknowledging the hard work you and your organisation, The American Obesity Foundation (AOF), have been doing for many years now, aiming to prevent obesity and its subsequent diseases all over the United States. This is by no means an easy job, I…

Black Lives and Black Minds Matter – It’s Time to End Racism in Mental Health

ELEANOR BREEN O’BYRNE Dear Sajid Javid, I am writing to you regarding the troubling and longstanding racial disparities which exist within mental healthcare. This is evidenced by the the fact that black people are four times more likely to be detained under the Mental Health Act than their white counterparts (NHS Digital, 2021). Racial disparities…

A Reformation of Transgender Healthcare in the United Kingdom

SEVEN MELL Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP House of Commons, London SW1A OAA 4th March 2022 Dear Secretary of State, I am writing to you, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, to express an immense dissatisfaction with the NHS’ provision of healthcare for transgender individuals in the United Kingdom. My intent is…