The main way SAs can influence health inequalities is through economic policy, I think. My thoughts are here: www.bmj.com/content/390/...

This is an excellent piece on why the metaphor of "pulling levers" should be laid to rest alongside the parrot from Notlob. I found nothing more discouraging during the GE '24 campaign than Starmer talking about "pulling the growth lever" open.substack.com/pub/howtorun...

Incredible social science & data use here. The immediate story is about how the opioid epidemic (pushed by pharma in high cancer areas), resulted in major opioid death & economic hardship which - through various media/political channels - resulted in a sustained rise in support for the Republicans

Sadly no longer with us, there are few who compare with John Clarke (and long-time partner Bryan Dawe) as a political satirist and before that a cultural commentator of sorts. 'The front fell off' is perhaps his most viral sketch...

Worth 5 minutes of anyone's time to read about Ronnie. Consider having a tissue handy in case something should happen to get in your eye 🥹

The people who profited most from the cancel culture/free speech panic were less interested in actual freedom of speech than establishing their own control over public discourse. You don't even have to take my word for it. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

Contact Tsatsakis and Abdolhahi, they can add your fictional paper to their next study! forbetterscience.com/2025/11/19/a...

Does anyone - anyone at all - have a plan to get us to a future where councils do have money to fix things again?

The health inequalities agenda is "tired and risks having run out of road" - not my words, the words of a senior health policymaker in the Scottish Government. But other SG policymakers told me health inequalities were a "huge priority" - so what's going on? A thread... 1/

I've been concerned recently to see a few blogs associating over-diagnosis & medicalisation critiques of mental health & neurodiversity with the right-wing, and even fascism. This excellent article by @jburnmurdoch.ft.com clearly shows some of the sociological concerns www.ft.com/content/8252...

It might be a record-breaking super-flu season, bringing the NHS to collapse. But often, a medical lens (the focus on pathology) diverts attention from systematic, social or political failures, such as...

Our first Special Issue is out now! It's on Reproductive Vulnerabilities: A Critical Perspective - Guest editors: Laura Sochas, Kaveri Qureshi, and Philip Kreager journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/jc...

Buying a new toaster, can't believe my eyes. Currys has one for £270 with 440 reviews. Another at £220 with 500+ reviews. Or a few options at £200 with collectively 2000+ reviews. These people need properly taxed, now!

'us v them' framing in all its guises is utterly poisonous to social democracy and therefore should be avoided like the plague by anyone interested in progressing anything that vaguely looks like social democracy

📉 This morning, the government published its full Child Poverty Strategy, setting out plans to reduce hardship for children growing up in the UK by the end of the parliament. It's a crucial commitment to delivering on one of their central manifesto promises.

Excellent to see this from The Economist. We are slow walking into a constitutional crisis driven by the electoral system, and very few people are taking it seriously enough yet.

On my shift at @oxfordmutualaid.bsky.social on Monday we had virtually no fruit or veg, virtually nothing in the fridges, and low stocks of bread. This is partly because of so many recent emergency requests for food parcels, way more than usual.

If a drug was having this societal effect it would be banned within a week. Across the world, politicians are - through their inaction - completely abdicating their responsibilities to civil democratic discourse.

the next couple of days are going to see a hell of a lot of "the rich declare themselves poor"

One of the biggest challenges in public health & environment-related fields is the miscommunication of population-scale results to the individual-level This is often caused by the desire to formulate “action” relevant to people’s lives but ends up blaming individuals for things not in their control

We have a few spaces left for an in person event on Tax and Poverty on the 5th December in Glasgow. Aimed at experts and non-experts alike. Speakers include @mikebrewerecon.bsky.social Sara Cowan (SWBG) and @elainemaag.bsky.social More info & link to register: www.eventbrite.com/e/poverty-an...

Twitter pays people based on engagement (views, retweets, comments, etc). It appears that many MAGA accounts are based abroad and they use AI technology to generate low-effort rage bait. My guess is that this will get worse as AI tech improves. For instance, fake videos of minorities doing crime.

PhD opportunity with @mark-glasgow.bsky.social, me and Mhairi Mackenzie looking at the Relational Determinants of Intersectional Health Inequalities. Get in touch if you'd like to discuss. tinyurl.com/RelateHealth

This does feel like a major crossing of the Rubicon – the world's best-funded and in many ways most powerful public health agency is now actively pushing disinformation. I know there's a *lot* going on to care about at the moment, but this one really is significant, and matters well beyond the US.

Relying on personal nutrition and exercise as the main pandemic strategy is a nice idea, but it leaves huge swaths of the pop exposed. Individual agency just isn’t equitable! people don’t all have the same time, resources etc to ‘optimise’ themselves to safety www.theatlantic.com/health/2025/...

I just asked Claude to turn one of my lectures into the script for an Adam Curtis documentary and I am not sorry

Huge COPs are an equity issue. We don't hear marginalised voices above the din of who can afford the pavilions, flights, comms teams, or hosting. theconversation.com/the-un-clima...

🚨 NEW in @bjpols.bsky.social : When Partygate hit Westminster, trust in Scottish politicians increased. Our experiments reveal a "contrast effect" - scandals at one level can make the other look better by comparison. Who lost most trust in Westminster? Scottish unionists. Read now #OpenAccess 👇

💯 You can basically lift this word-for-word for healthcare too.

Good thread, lots of competing (with different advocates and 'fashions') and shifting meanings of health inequalities (as other concepts such as population health), v evident in English policy and debate too over time.

The contrast between how expensive the cars are in this country and how shabby everything else is tells you that we absolutely can afford to electrify the railways and a million other nice things, but we have politicians that are terrified of asking for a few pennies extra in tax

Food industry corporate greenwashing www.foodpolitics.com/2025/10/food... Comparing promises ("we will be good", "we care") with actions "food companies have no market incentive to reduce their environmental impact if it is going to raise their costs".

Check out this terrific new work by @allybrown.bsky.social!

Beautiful autumn leaves, very silly dog (Marble)

The health inequalities agenda is "tired and risks having run out of road" - not my words, the words of a senior health policymaker in the Scottish Government. But other SG policymakers told me health inequalities were a "huge priority" - so what's going on? A thread... 1/

Look for this factor and you see it - and its absence - everywhere: Starmer and Reeves can't do it, Burnham can. Of the older generation of Democrats, only Biden.

🎬 🍿 Official Film Release! We’re thrilled to announce the public release of Unmasking Influence -now available via the LSHTM Vimeo channel! vimeo.com/1123819285 There is overwhelming evidence that many industries are undermining public health.This documentary makes the issues visible and relatable.

Here's a paper we wrote about how it's actually very bad that a "context of constrained funding has incentivised... providers of adult education, sports, arts and community services to demonstrate ancillary wellbeing benefits." pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40447986/

Jesus Christ. We go mad about one bloke we wrongly released, yet hear next to nothing about this horror? www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

New post out: "The worst social policy ever" Today we have a guest post from @ruthpatrick0.bsky.social on the abomination that is the two-child limit and why Labour need to scrap it ASAP. Lots of data but also powerful testimony. (Free to read) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/t...

X is a cesspit led by an unhinged billionaire who is desperately trying to stir up civil war in Britain. Nobody with any sense or decency should be there. No organisations, government departments, or politicians should be there. Everyone who is, is enabling this monster.

We are in the process of creating a new journal for our community, the Population Health Journal, and we are now inviting applications for editors: journals.gla.ac.uk/phj/announce....

Shocked that this is on X - a lawless, extreme platform where the majority of Westminster still mingles without any thought to whether they should be there.

The relationship between UPFs and the environment is miles more complicated than this. UPFs are a hugely diverse category, but this article pretends they are all like M&Ms. What about plant-based meat and dairy alternatives?

What timing! The "planetary health diet" has just been updated: www.theguardian.com/environment/...

NEW systematic review of the evidence shows that raising incomes is how to reduce food insecurity. The evidence does not support food-based interventions as reducing food insecurity. Food retail subsidy programs and housing assistance programs don't ⬇️ food insecurity. www.canada.ca/content/dam/...

Big news today: price or multibuy promotions on unhealthy food and drink (e.g. BOGOF deals) are now banned in England! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...