I recently wrote an article in The Guardian reflecting on what we have learned in the fifty years since the first ever national diabetes survey was carried out, in the small island nation of Nauru. Type 2 diabetes is a global population health phenomenon that both drives, and is driven by, major societal transformations. Since…
Over the past few weeks I’ve been re-reading some of my own work and reflecting on a theme threading between three pieces: the energy balance conundrum. The first of the three pieces is Stanley Ulijaszek and my review of obesity policy in the UK. We reviewed obesity policies themselves, as well as the cultural contexts…
Despite the veneer of scientific objectivity, medicine and the medical sciences are built on stories. From therapeutic emplotment and narrative reasoning in clinical encounters (e.g. Cheryl Mattingly’s work) to patient histories and illness narratives (e.g. Arthur Kleinman) to the metaphors we use to describe disease (e.g. Susan Sontag, Emily Martin), stories at once help us…
I stumbled across Kevin Hazzard’s book “American Sirens” after listening to the 99% Invisible podcast episode on the Freedom House Ambulance Service. It was an excellent stumble. Can you even imagine a time before ambulances, CPR, emergency medicine? When the assumption about emergencies was that patients had to be moved as fast as possible to…
Madeline Miller’s works The Song of Achilles and Circe are powerful, expertly-written retellings of stories that have been passed down and re-told across centuries. What makes them so striking? In part, I think, because they are so firmly grounded in her expertise in Greek mythology – while they are works of fiction, they are clearly…
As I develop a new body of work around chronic inflammation, I’ve been going back to a lot of the basics, including to the history of homeostasis. As a result, I’m currently reading the biographies and key works of Walter Cannon, Claude Bernard, and their families. There are surprisingly many books on the list. Cannon…
This triplet of short pieces, recommended by my excellent former colleague Bill Bannear, offers some great provocations around the importance of human relationships in complex systems. Bill’s piece on relationships and emergence starts with his reflections about the challenges of working with government clients who struggle to find value in the creation of relationships as…
I love reading two books at once, and bringing them into conversation with each other. I don’t always choose pairings deliberately; with this pairing it was simply because they arrived at the same time. Together, they made for a powerful read about women and health. “The Doctors Blackwell: How two pioneering sisters brought medicine to…