Medical Anthropology at UCL

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…

Mental Health on Campus: An Investment in Long-Term Mental Health is an Investment in Individual and Institution

KABIR KHANNA Dr Michael Spence President & Provost’s Office University College London Gower Street London WC1E6BT United Kingdom Mental Health on Campus: An Investment in Long-Term Mental Health is an Investment in Individual and Institution Dear Dr Michael Spence, I write this letter as one of the 40,000 people currently studying at UCL. Over the…

Food is neither love nor salvation

HE ZHANG Professor Linying Li Beijing Institute of Technology, School of Humanities and Social Sciences China Women’s Health Network No. 5 Zhongguancun South Street, Haidian District, Beijing, 100081 Dear Professor Li, It is my pleasure to write to you. I am a Chinese student studying for the degree of Master of Arts in Health Humanities…

Changing the Singapore Approach to Sugar

NATASHA STURGESS Mr Gan Kim YongMinistry of Health16 College RoadCollege of Medicine Building Singapore 169854 6th March 2022 Dear Minister, I hope this letter comes to you well. I am writing to you in light of the recent parliamentary budget debate on the 28th February 2022, to which Sembawang Minister of Parliament (MP) Poh Li…

Dear Mr. Javid, CAMHS Is a Joke

NAPAT PRASITSIRIGUL Dear Mr. Javid, CAMHS is a joke. Like many others my age, I enjoy mindlessly scrolling through TikTok in my free time. Occasionally I come across a teenager parodying their experiences at CAMHS. These clips usually follow the same pattern: a teenager comes to their CAMHS appointment and discloses worrying information about their…

Prioritising Continuity Of Care Within General Practice

ROWAN VICK MAEER 18 High Street Bromsgrove B61 8HQ Dear Sajid Javid, I am writing to you concerning your proposed changes to the NHS in 2022, which involves restructuring primary care to ‘join up’ healthcare (2). Whilst I agree that ‘joined up’ care between the different health and social sectors is a priority, I am…

Fighting to Improve Disability Awareness within Healthcare

JILLIAN MANN Dear Erin Stampp, My brother, Hank, has faced a lifetime’s worth of scrutiny and maltreatment. Hank was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy at the age of two years old. He is wheelchair bound with spastic quadriplegia. But more importantly, he is a Marvel-loving, Beatles fanatic with a contagious smile in his second year of law…