The Department of Public Health and Primary Care is setting up a new medical humanities working group. This aims to explore and utilise the relevance of the arts and humanities to medical education. Dr Anne Swift (Director, Improving Health teaching) Dr Robbie Duschinsky (Head, Applied Social Science group at the Primary Care Unit) and Dr […]
The unusual perks of my research job: Dr Sophie Reijman
Dr Sophie Reijman, research associate at the Applied Social Science Group, explains how her career has unfolded so far. The dynamics of family relationships and how these influence children’s mental and physical health are an important part of our research at the Applied Social Science Group here at the University of Cambridge. Read Sophie’s article
Why are we unable to walk safely on our country roads?
Professor Mike Kelly, senior visiting fellow at the Primary Care Unit, writing in the Guardian, explains why it took an integrated strategy to cut smoking. He suggests that we need major infrastructural changes if we are to increase our physical activity – not just information and advice. “Getting the population more active is an absolute […]
What makes social life possible? How the human brain connects with the complex social world around us
The social lives of humans shape and influence biological processes taking place in our brains, according to a new theoretical framework linking sociological thinking with insights from neuroscience. The new framework, from Professor Mike Kelly, sociologist at the Primary Care Unit and Professor Paul Fletcher, Bernard Wolfe Professor of Health Neuroscience and colleagues from the […]
Ambulance staff describe hospital as only feasible place of care for dying patients
Ambulance staff are responding to the needs of dying patients by taking them to hospital because of a lack of alternative community-based forms of care and limited access to patient information, according to a paper published in Palliative Medicine. The study, a sociological analysis of the experiences of ambulance staff attending to patients close to […]
Emphasis on individual choice has limited Government attempts to reduce health inequalities, according to new analysis of UK public health policies
In a study published today in the Journal of Public Health, researchers from the University of Cambridge and RAND Europe find that theory and evidence on health inequalities drawn from history, sociology, philosophy, psychology, biology and neuroscience have been largely ignored in a series of government efforts to limit health inequalities and reduce non-communicable diseases over the […]