- Article
- Article
Sex work and critical campaigners
When campaigners filmed secretly in the club where she worked, exotic dancer Ella Smith felt frightened and degraded. Here she speaks out about the attack on her livelihood.
- Article
- Article
Children in burns prevention campaigns
Whose responsibility is it to prevent accidental burns and scalds in the home? Shane Ewen’s research shows that it’s everyone’s concern.
- Interview
- Interview
How to design an HIV awareness campaign
Using carefully crafted, colourful graphics is one public health team’s creative approach.
- Article
- Article
Public health campaigns and the ‘threat’ of disability
By continuing to represent disability as the feared outcome of disease, public health campaigns help to perpetuate prejudice against disabled people.
- Article
- Article
Graphic battles in pharmacy
James Morison’s campaign against the medical establishment inspired a wave of caricatures mocking his quack medicine.
- Article
- Article
Going viral in the online anti-vaccine wars
‘Anti-vaxxers’ are taking their message online using powerful images as well as words. But is the pro campaigners’ response any better?
- Article
- Article
Mary Morris-Knibb, a woman of courage and ability
A Jamaican election banner reveals the story of a pioneering women’s rights campaigner who continues to inspire 80 years on.
- Article
- Article
The metamorphosis of masturbation
Throughout history, medics and campaigners have tried to stamp out masturbation – but is modern science transforming its reputation?
- Article
- Article
The child whose town rejected vaccines
Gloucester, 1896. Ethel Cromwell is taken ill at the height of Britain’s last great smallpox epidemic.
- Article
- Article
Is it really OK to not be OK?
Our mental healthcare system is still the poor relation of services that treat physical illness, and the pandemic has shone a spotlight on this situation. Campaigner James Downs argues for fundamental change.
- Article
- Article
Cowpox, Covid-19 and Jenner’s vaccination legacy
The well-known story of vaccination pioneer Edward Jenner has at its heart his drive to make vaccines free of charge and available to all. Now his principles extend to the global campaign for a people’s patent-free vaccine for Covid-19.
- Article
- Article
Dementia playlists and musical memory
Listening to the right music can provide both solace and pleasure for someone with dementia, helping them to reconnect with the world around them. Grace Meadows makes the case for more music in dementia care.
- In pictures
- In pictures
Guilty chimneys and the threat to the air we breathe
Industrialisation brought visibly polluted air to the world’s cities, captured in various media from the 1800s. Angela Saward explores the methods used, and the messages the images conveyed.
- In pictures
- In pictures
Telling Scotland about AIDS
Find out how activists and organisations working on AIDS information campaigns in 1980s Scotland used cartoons, kilts, and candid language to convey their message.
- In pictures
- In pictures
Herbal medicines and the early modern menopause
Held responsible for their own “rebellious distempers” – or menopausal symptoms – women had no choice but to keep quiet and resort to unpalatable concoctions in the hope of relief, as Julia Nurse explains.
- Article
- Article
Why we no longer keep our dead at home
Today in the UK we rarely sit with, touch, or perhaps even see our loved ones after they’ve died. Past practices were very different and, Claire Cock-Starkey argues, were more helpful for those grieving.
- Article
- Article
Disability in the post-pandemic world
Disabled people have suffered more than most during Covid-19, but there is still a chance to build a kinder society. Dolly Sen explores whether we will come together, or allow more brutal disparities to develop in the worsening recession.
- Article
- Article
My illness made me an activist, but now I’m exhausted
Emily Bashforth’s illness made her an advocate but now she’s battling burnout. She argues why we all need to be mental health activists, not just those with lived experience.
- Photo story
- Photo story
‘My Hair Is Not…’
Eight Black people talk about their relationship with their hair – their hairstyle history, their experiences, and how they decided to have natural hair.
- In pictures
- In pictures
AIDS awareness posters from the 1980s onwards
The AIDS public health poster campaign chose print even in the internet age and dealt with issues of identity and behaviour like never before.
- Article
- Article
Taking the piss
Council cuts have created public-toilet deserts across the UK, limiting journeys and days out for people whose medical conditions mean toilet access is essential. Campaigner Kevin Crowe highlights the issues.
- Article
- Article
How to rehabilitate the concrete jungle
A huge concrete housing estate from the 1960s, now seen as an ecological mistake, is being drastically redeveloped, compounding the environmental errors. Owen Hatherley posits a more creative solution.
- Article
- Article
Medics and the bomb
Would a nuclear attack on the UK overwhelm the NHS? At the height of the Cold War, despite government optimism, medics predicted doom.
- Article
- Article
Families fighting for justice
In 1962 a group of parents whose children had been affected by thalidomide began a decades-long battle in the law courts, the media and Parliament in order to win fair justice for all thalidomide survivors.
- Article
- Article
Thalidomide survivors in the 21st century
As thalidomide survivors enter their 60s, they look back on their lives and the legacy of the thalidomide catastrophe.