- 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.
- Article
- Article
How we bury our children
Following her baby daughter’s funeral, Wendy Pratt found that visiting the grave gave her a way to carry out physical acts of caring for her child. Here she considers how parents’ nurturing instincts live on after a child’s death.
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- Article
Having children as a fat woman
When she sought fertility advice, and at antenatal appointments, Ellie Levenson found that medics were openly anti-fat. Only years later can she evaluate the true repercussions of their words and actions.
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- 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.
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- Article
Picturing mental health
Ron Hampshire created artworks while resident at Netherne psychiatric hospital. What can we learn from them?
- Article
- Article
Designing better mental health wards
Bringing colour and natural light to tired, grubby mental health wards has a measurably positive effect on patients. A few groundbreaking projects are showing the way.
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- Article
Two health centres, two ideologies
Two futuristic, light-filled buildings aimed to bring forward-looking healthcare to city dwellers. But the principles behind each were very different.
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- Article
Thomas Sankara and the stomachs that made themselves heard
Thomas Sankara’s vision to transform farming and health in Burkina Faso turned to dust with his assassination. Perry Blankson highlights the considerable achievements of Sankara’s brief span in power.
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- Article
Love, longing and tea from the polski sklep
For people of Polish origin in the UK, herbal tea is closely tied to health and shared history. Kasia Tomasiewicz explores her changing relationship to these tea-related cultural habits.
- Article
- Article
We need less ‘sickle cell warriors’ and more allies
Rejecting the epithet “warrior”, Cheryl Telfer describes the pervasive effect sickle cell disease has on her life, and calls for more people to donate blood to help sicklers.
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- Article
Desperate housewives and suburban neurosis
Discover how a pioneering health centre replaced housewives’ supposedly empty home lives with a social space that encouraged healthy child rearing.
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- Article
Epidemic threats and racist legacies
Epidemiology is the systematic, data-driven study of health and disease in populations. But as historian Jacob Steere-Williams suggests, this most scientific of fields emerged in the 19th century imbued with a doctrine of Western imperialism – a legacy that continues to influence how we talk about disease.
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- Article
Dirt, disease and the Inspector of Nuisances
In the days when ‘bad air’ was thought to spread disease, dozens of Inspectors of Nuisances ceaselessly struggled against the perils of dirt – both visible and invisible.
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- Article
Disability, education and prejudice
In the 1960s and 1970s, thalidomide survivors had to fight for a proper education. If they weren’t brought up in institutions, they were often viewed as objects of curiosity, encountering verbal and sometimes physical abuse, both at school and in the world beyond.
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- Article
Pain and the power of activism
Today, women with endometriosis have more access to better information than ever before. Jaipreet Virdi applauds the shared stories, online communities and self-help books empowering women in pain.
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Mask, ritual and fertility
Today many of us learn about fertility, conception and pregnancy online. But that wasn’t always the way. Discover how masks and rituals played an important educational role.
- Photo story
- Photo story
Obesity and Britain’s boys
Six young men and six experiences of being overweight. Find out how these boys and their loved ones feel about this stigmatising issue.
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- Article
Booze and bad behaviour
Our love of alcohol is like a party that’s lasted nine centuries. But there are signs that the demon drink is losing its appeal.
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Intelligence testing, race and eugenics
Specious ideas and assumptions about intelligence that were born during the great flourishing of eugenics well over 100 years ago still inform the British education system today, as Nazlin Bhimani reveals.
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Eugenics and the welfare state
Indy Bhullar explores the ideas of William Beveridge and Richard Titmuss, who were strongly influenced by eugenic thinking, and yet championed the idea of the welfare state.
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Belonging, babies and self-belief
As a first-time mother living abroad, it seemed too exhausting to truly connect with new acquaintances. Instead, Tanya Perdikou began to make a kind of peace with herself.
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Queer cafés and gay mylk
Holly Regan explores queer London spaces where the alternative – oat milk – is the norm for the communities gathering there.
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- 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.
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- Article
Ancestry, privacy and the family tree
Wanting to find out more about her Jamaican grandfather, Tanya Perdikou contemplates DNA testing. But first she has to consider the potential impact of unexpected results.
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- Article
Yoga adapts to time and place
A yoga teacher in 1930s India inspired today’s transnational practice with his spectacular fusion of tradition and innovation.