GHSM Spring 2017 Newsletter | www.kcl.ac.uk/ghsm
GLOBAL HEALTH & SOCIAL MEDICINE
PHD STUDENT LEADS
BMJ EDITORIAL
PhD student Vicky Charlton is first
author of a British Medical Journal
PRIZES & NOMINATIONS
2
GRANTS & SCHOLARSHIPS
5
RESEARCH NEWS
6
NEW PUBLICATIONS
8
OUTREACH
11
EVENTS
14
EXCURSIONS
16
UNDERGRADUATES
18
POSTGRADUATES
20
CAREER DESTINATIONS
22
IN THE MEDIA
24
NEWS
PRAINSACK
LAUNCHES NEW
BOOK
Prof Barbara Prainsack and coauthor Prof Alena Buyx
launched their much awaited
editorial published on 22 March 2017.
The article, titled ‘Cost-effective but
unaffordable: An emerging challenge
for health systems’ argues that a new
“budget impact test,” to be applied by
the National Institute for Health and
Care Excellence (NICE), is an
unpopular and flawed attempt to solve
a fundamentally political problem. The
editorial was written together with Dr
Annette Rid and others from the KCL/
UCL Social Values and Health Priority
Setting group. Rid comments: “The
test means that NICE-recommended
technologies costing the NHS more
than an additional £20 million a year
will be ‘slow-tracked’, regardless of
their cost-effectiveness or other social
or ethical values.”
book Solidarity in Biomedicine
a n d B e y o n d ( C a m b r i d g e
University Press, 2017) on
1 M a rc h 2 0 1 7 . T h e b o o k
focuses on the notion of
solidarity, gaining new currency
in times of global economic and
political crises.
Outreach Page 12
Publications Page10
New Publications
Page 9
HUMANITARIAN AID CONFERENCE IN BERLIN
In October 2016, six GHSM
undergraduates travelled to Berlin to
attend the annual Humanitarian
Congress, a humanitarian aid
conference organised by MSF,
Doctors of the World and the
German Red Cross. This year’s
t h e m e w a s ‘ T h e Po l i t i c s o f
Compassion,’ and the conference
focused heavily on how changes in
warfare tactics have now put
healthcare under fire – with
hospitals, UN convoys and aid
workers increasingly being targeted.
Undergraduates Page 19
Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
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GHSM Spring 2017 Newsletter | www.kcl.ac.uk/ghsm
PRIZES AND NOMINATIONS
PRAINSACK APPOINTED TO
EUROPEAN GROUP ON ETHICS
Prof Barbara Prainsack has been appointed member of
the prestigious European Group on Ethics and New
Technologies (EGE) in March 2017 by the President of
the European Commission.
EGE provides a unique forum for deliberation and
reflection, where members carefully and thoughtfully
weigh the consequences and ethical dimensions of policy
choices. As an EGE member, Prainsack will examine the
ever closer intermeshing between technological
advancement and broad societal and political
developments, deliver advice that transcends disciplinary
boundaries, focus on emergent urgencies as well as long
term trajectories, and consider not only the national and
European contexts of the ethical questions placed before
her, but also the global nature of contemporary ethical
dilemmas, in order to provide the European Commission
with the best possible ethical advice to formulate its
policies and legislation.
RID APPOINTED TO ROYAL
COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS
COMMITTEE
Dr Annette Rid has been appointed to the Royal College
of Physicians Committee on Ethical Issues in Medicine.
The committee advises the College on ethical questions
related to its work, as well as providing input on the
College’s responses to consultations from relevant bodies
like the General Medical Council or NHS England.
“Your professional expertise and
considerable experience will
enable the European Commission
to benefit from the highest quality
independent advice”
On Prainsack’s appointment, Commissioner for
Research, Science and Innovation, Carlos Moedas, said:
“President Jean-Claude Juncker and I are convinced that
your professional expertise and considerable experience
will enable the European Commission to benefit from
the highest quality independent advice on all aspects of
its policies and legislation where ethical, societal and
fundamental rights dimensions intersect with the
development of science and new technologies.”
Prainsack’s appointment is for a term of two and a half
years.
Warm congratulations to Barbara, Annette, Alysia, Anthea, Ashley, Sarah, Emma and John for their
outstanding achievements and well-deserved recognition.
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Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
GHSM Spring 2017 Newsletter | www.kcl.ac.uk/ghsm
RID APPOINTED TO GLOBAL
BIOETHICS EDITORIAL BOARD
MONTROSE AND TINKER WIN
KING’S AWARDS
Dr Annette Rid has been appointed to join the Global
Bioethics editorial board. The journal brings together
scholarship from around the world and provides a broad
open access international forum for research on the
ethical aspects of global health research, practice and
policy.
GHSM is proud to have two of its staff members
recognised in this year’s King’s Awards. Now in their
tenth year, the Awards are one of the most high-profile
ways in which the university recognises the achievements
of members of its community.
SUCCESS IN THE KING’S
EXPERIENCE AWARDS
Undergraduate student Ashley Oyo Williams
has been awarded a King’s Experience
Research Award in December 2016 for her
successful KURF project. King's
Undergraduate Research Fellowships (KURF)
give undergraduate students the unique
opportunity to learn alongside King’s leading
academics. Williams’ KURF project aimed to
investigate the influence of geo-cultural
differences on learning, and was undertaken
under the supervision of Dr Thushari
Welikala, Director of Teaching Recognition at
King’s. Williams commented: “My main role entailed
study design, participant recruitment, interviews,
transcription and data analysis. I found the whole
experience incredibly enriching particularly as I worked
very closely with Dr. Welikala and learned a lot about
qualitative research. I also learned from the experience
of other students whom I would not necessarily have
c o m e i n t o c o n t a c t w i t h o t h e r w i s e. I wo u l d
highly recommend KURF to those who would like to
combine a paid internship with
academic learning during their summer holidays.”
“I would highly recommend
King’s Undergraduate Research
Fellowships to those who would
like to combine a paid internship
with academic learning during
their summer holidays”
King’s Experience Awards are given for learning
undertaken outside the formal curriculum. The KURF
scheme is now open for summer 2017 applications.
Alysia Montrose was awarded the ‘Most Outstanding
Contribution to the Student Experience’ award,
confirming what all of us in GHSM know: she is a
wonderful colleague and her support for each and every
one of our students is fantastic. She has done so much to
make our Department a success, and is a very worthy
winner.
Prof Anthea Tinker was awarded the ‘Lifetime
Achievement’ award, a just recognition for a lifetime of
service, both before she came to King’s and since she has
been here, at the Institute of Gerontology and then in
GHSM. She is a role model for our colleagues and our
students, a brilliant teacher, supervisor and researcher.
She has been central to the development of our
Department.
RID APPOINTED TO NATIONAL
RESEARCH ETHICS ADVISORS
PANEL
Dr Annette Rid has been appointed to the National
Research Ethics Advisors Panel that provides advice to
the UK Health Research Authority (HRA) on matters
related to the HRA’s strategic objectives, policy and
policy development, and emerging issues regarding
research ethics and regulation. Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
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GHSM Spring 2017 Newsletter | www.kcl.ac.uk/ghsm
POLICY IDOL FINALISTS
Global Health & Social Justice MSc students Sarah
Williams and Emma Wynne-Bannister have been
selected as finalists of Policy Idol 2017. The annual
competition run by the Policy Institute at King’s gives
King’s students an opportunity to pitch policy ideas to an
elite panel of leading figures from the worlds of politics,
academia and industry. Participants have three minutes
to present their ideas to the judges, who assess the pitch
on the quality of delivery and the evidence and analysis
underpinning it.
comprise only 5% of the prison population, are
disproportionately affected by this catch 22 as they are
more likely to commit non-violent crimes and receive
shorter sentences. Moreover, women are more likely to
enter prison on a background of mental health issues,
domestic violence, single parenthood, sexual and
psychological abuse. Evidence abounds that women fare
much better with community based sentences. Therefore
we propose that women committing their first nonviolent offence are immediately diverted to a community
service and care pathway, jointly commissioned and
delivered by the Criminal Justice System, the Association
of Directors of Adult Social Services and the National
Health Service England.”
The Policy Idol final takes place in front of a live
audience on 28 March 2017, with both judges and the
audience voting for their favourite idea. Congratulations
to Williams and Wynne-Bannister for getting this far.
Come along and support them on the 28th!
JOHN HARRIS APPOINTED
GHSM VISITING PROFESSOR IN
BIOETHICS
Prof John Harris was appointed Visiting Professor in
Bioethics in GHSM on 1 January 2017. Harris is one of
the most prominent living bioethicists. Educated at the
University of Kent and at Balliol College, Oxford, he is
the author or editor of twenty-one books and over three
hundred peer-reviewed articles. Harris has, throughout
his career, defended broadly libertarian - consequentialist
approaches to issues in bioethics. This has made him a
leading defender of the rights of the individual to access
medical technology and to benefit from medical services.
Williams and Wynne-Bannister’s pitch – ‘A Reformation
of Reformation’ – focuses on sentencing women who
commit non-violent crimes in the UK. They explain:
“Short custodial sentences are long enough for a prisoner
to lose their home, benefits and family, but not long
enough to re-establish these for release. Women, who
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Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
Harris has already been significantly involved in GHSM,
having given a number of seminars since the
introduction of our Bioethics & Society programme in
2014-15. Over the next three years as a Visiting
Professor, Harris will give lectures and seminars in his
specialist areas, advise students on dissertations, engage
in collaborative research, and more generally contribute
to the life of the Department and the Bioethics & Society
programme. He intends to mentor students during their
matriculation in the programme, and offer seminars on
research methodologies in ethics as well as in ‘how to
publish successfully’ for PhD and Post-Doctoral
students. This, Harris believes to be a much-neglected
area in academia and he says: “getting published is
a learnable skill like any other.”
We are thrilled to have John Harris join us – with him on
board, the Department will continue to make its mark on
the history of bioethics in the UK as a leading centre of
excellence for teaching, research and public engagement.
GHSM Spring 2017 Newsletter | www.kcl.ac.uk/ghsm
GRANTS & SCHOLARSHIPS
STUDENT
OPPORTUNITY
FUND AWARD
FACULTY
RESEARCH GRANT
SUCCESS
Undergraduate students Robert
Smith, Hannah Akki and Gurkirpal
Khosa have been awarded funding
from the King’s Student
Opportunity Fund to host a
hackathon for their initiative NGOs
United. The initiative aims to
actively promote NGO
communication in aid delivery,
provide donors with transparency
and give beneficiaries a voice.
T hey’re initially focused on
improving the effectiveness of
NGOs working in Haiti, by
producing online collaboration
mechanisms and data on who is
doing what, where and how.
Prof John Abraham was awarded a
Faculty Research Grant of £12,000
to promote research on
pharmaceutical regulatory reform.
The award funds a part-time
Research Associate to work with
Abraham for 6 months from 1
February 2017.
Robert Smith commented: “What
started off as a data collection
project on who is doing what and
where in Haiti has led to the
production of a podcast titled
‘Development United’ and to the
production of a social enterprise
titled NGOs United which is
currently prototyping a minimum
viable product that will stimulate
project collaboration among
NGOs. On 1 April 2017, we will be
hosting the ‘NGO Coordination
Innovation Day’ at King’s with the
support of the Student Opportunity
Fund. This hackathon will bring
together the best of London’s tech
sector, development sector, and
global health academics and
students to work collaboratively to
produce tech based mechanisms to
stimulate NGO coordination.”
Read more about this brilliant
endeavour at www.ngosunited.com
MENTAL HEALTH,
MIGRATION & THE
MEGACITY SÃO
PAULO Prof Nikolas Rose, Prof Nick
Manning and Dr Dominique
Behague, together with Laura
Andrade and colleagues from the
Institute of Psychiatry at the
University of São Paulo, Brazil, have
been awarded £60,000 from
FAPESP/King’s to take the first
steps to developing their ‘M3’
project from Shanghai into Brazil.
The money will pay for initial pilot
work, with the aim of submitting in
the near future for further funding
for a major project for São Paulo.
Latin America, strikingly little is
known about the relationship
between mental health and the
rapidly-expanding mega-cities of
our century, in countries such as
China, Brazil and India. This
programme of work aims to
develop the sociology of major and
expanding cities such as Shanghai,
São Paulo and Mumbai, particularly
the consequences for the mental
health of their citizens, and to
identify new ways to untangle and
counter the relations between
migration, poverty and poor
mental health.
AUSTRALIAN
RESEARCH
COUNCIL GRANT
Prof Nikolas Rose and colleagues
a t t h e I n s t i t u t e f o r C u l t u re
and Society at Western Sydney
University, have been awarded an
Australian Research Council grant
on ‘Assembling and Governing
Habits.’ The grant will run from July
2017 to June 2020, and is worth
around AU$400,000.
Both projects are part of a
programme of work initiated by
Prof Nikolas Rose, with a
development grant from the ESRC
in 2013-15, to examine the
relationship between urban living
and mental health. Despite the
wide recognition that we are in the
midst of another period of
significant urbanisation whose
prime exemplars are in Asia and in
Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
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GHSM Spring 2017 Newsletter | www.kcl.ac.uk/ghsm
RESEARCH NEWS
SO LONG PROF ROSE!
An era has come to an end with Prof Nikolas Rose
stepping down from Head of Department at the end of
2016 after 5 fantastic years in which he created from
scratch a unique, innovative and interdisciplinary social
sciences department at King’s. We are all so grateful for
what he has done for each one of us at GHSM and for
what he has done to advance knowledge and practice on
social determinants of health in the world. We wish him
all the best for a well-deserved study leave in 2017.
Congratulations to our new Head of Department Prof
Karen Glaser who, as put by our Prof Bronwyn Parry,
now Head of School of Global Affairs, is “a tough chick
for taking on the challenge!” We all look forward to
working with her to take GHSM to new horizons in
2017 and onwards.
TO SEA WE WENT WITH PENS
IN HAND
Thinking requires the company of others. And whoever
is engaged in the process of writing, writes with others in
mind. This idea of thinking and writing in the company
of others was at the heart of the CMP Writing Retreat
organized by Dr Hanna Kienzler and Dr Carlo Caduff.
The group of 12 participants spent a long weekend at a
cottage by the sea in January 2017, working intensively
on their writing skills. Caduff comments: “A series of
exercises removed the weight of conventions and the
burden of expectations, and made our words fly in
unexpected directions. We returned to our research
materials and explored new ways of combining the
empirical with the literary.” NSN WRITING RETREAT
Doctoral students Sam Mclean and Tara Mahfoud
convened a five-day ‘Humanities School’ writing retreat
in Brighton on 10-14 September 2016 under the
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6
Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
auspices of the Neuroscience and Society Network
(NSN). The retreat brought together PhD students and
NEW PODCAST SERIES
ON HEALTH & SOCIETY GHSM early career researchers launched
‘Health & Society,’ a new podcast series, on 8
November 2016. The series features
researchers discussing a broad range of
health-related issues with well-known
‘Philosophy Bites’ interviewer Nigel
Warburton. Exploring subjects like addiction and memory,
health apps, reproductive technologies and
genetics, population ageing, and epigenetic
research, the podcasts aim to support an
improved understanding of pertinent health
issues facing the world today. The podcasts
are informative, accessible and entertaining. It
is hoped they encourage early career
researchers to engage with new media and
share their invaluable work. The series is produced by Dr Silvia Camporesi,
Giulia Cavaliere and James Fletcher, alongside
King’s alumni Aidan Judd and Ellie Clifford.
You can listen to Health & Society via iTunes
and SoundCloud, as well as on the dedicated
website www.healthandsociety.co.uk, where
you will also find transcripts, researcher
biographies and further information.
early career scholars in the neurosciences, humanities
and social sciences to think and write together about the
challenges of interdisciplinarity and collaboration. The
retreat also provided an opportunity to bring together
future NSN leaders to shape the direction and focus of
GHSM Spring 2017 Newsletter | www.kcl.ac.uk/ghsm
the network going forwards, and participants are
currently working on funding applications to further
develop themes explored at the retreat.
DISCUSSION SERIES ON
BIOLOGICAL THREATS
Dr Filippa Lentzos launched her edited volume
Biological Threats in the 21st Century with a series of
author panel discussions held at George Mason
University on 14 October 2016, the United Nations on 9
November 2016, and King’s on 17 November 2016. The
series was kicked off with a keynote address by Andrew
C. Weber, former Deputy Coordinator for Ebola
Response at the US Department of State and former
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical
and Biological Defense Programs.
PLENARY LECTURE ON
PRIMODOS
On 27 January 2017, Prof John Abraham gave the
plenary lecture at a Cambridge conference on the
‘History of UK drug safety regulation’ as part of the
investigation into whether Primodos is the forgotten
thalidomide.
INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF
GERONTECHNOLOGY PLENARY
Prof Anthea Tinker gave a plenary lecture on ‘Age
friendly cities: Lessons from London’ at the September
2016 conference of the International Society of
Gerontechnology in Nice, France.
HUMAN BRAIN
PROJECT CONFERENCE
effective? And what about the social, political, economic
and institutional contexts we all work in – how do these
affect how collaborations take shape and how knowledge
is created?
LECTURE TOUR IN AUSTRALIA
Prof Nikolas Rose completed a two-week lecture tour of
Australia in early March 2017. He gave public lectures
on ‘The urban brain: Living in the neurosocial city’ at
the University of New South Wales in Sydney and at
Western Sydney University. He gave masterclasses on
biopsychiatry and resilience at the University of New
South Wales and on rethinking the relations between the
neurosciences and the social sciences at the Australian
National University in Canberra. He gave additional
invited lectures at the University of New South Wales
and Western Sydney University, as well as at Macquarie
University.
GHSM JOINS INTERNATIONAL
BIOETHICS CONSORTIUM
GHSM joined an international consortium of
institutions working in bioethics, which comprises - in
addition to the King’s Centres for Medical Law & Ethics
and Politics, Philosophy & Law - the Mount Sinai School
of Medicine, Oxford University, the Vrije University of
Amsterdam, and Bar Ilan University. The consortium
meets once a year to discuss and critique completed
projects and work in progress on a wide range of
interdisciplinary issues involving medicine and science,
philosophy, history, sociology, literature, law, and public
affairs. The next meeting will be held at the University
of Oxford from 3-5 April 2017. For further information,
please contact Dr Annette Rid: [email protected]. Foresight Lab researchers Tara Mahfoud
and Dr Christine Aicardi convened a
discussion session at the first Human Brain
Project (HBP) student conference held in
Vienna 8-10 February 2017. The aim of
the session, on the complex and conflicted
ethics of collaboration, was to push the
audience of PhD students and early career
researchers in neuroscience and computing
to think of collaboration as not just
technical and to think of ethics as not just
protocol.
Some of the key questions addressed were:
What are the challenges scientists face in
collaborations? Is interdisciplinarity always
the way to move knowledge forward? Are
large-scale collaborations always more
Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
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GHSM Spring 2017 Newsletter | www.kcl.ac.uk/ghsm
NEW PUBLICATIONS
GHSM staff publishes its
research in leading social
science journals. Much of our
research is done
collaboratively with natural
scientists, medical
practitioners and health
professionals, and we also
publish collaboratively with
them. For a listing of our
staff’s publications see their
individual profiles on King’s
Research Portal Pure. Here,
we feature books, project
reports, student publications
and other notable publications
in the Department.
BEHROUZAN
LAUNCHES
PROZAK DIARIES
Dr Orkideh Behrouzan launched
her acclaimed book Prozak Diaries
(Stanford University Press, 2016) at
King’s on 5 December 2016,
following a series of book talks at
the University of California
Berkeley, New York University,
John Hopkins University and MIT.
The book is an analysis of
emerging psychiatric discourses in
post-1980s Iran. It examines a
cultural shift in how people
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interpret and express their feeling
states, by adopting the language of
p s yc h i a t r y, a n d s h o w s h o w
experiences that were once
articulated in the richly layered
poetics of the Persian language
became, by the 1990s, part of a
clinical discourse on mood and
affect. In asking how psychiatric
dialect becomes a language of
everyday, the book analyzes
cultural forms created by this
clinical discourse, exploring
individual, professional, and
generational cultures of
medicalization in various sites from
clinical encounters and psychiatric
training, to intimate interviews,
works of art and media, and
Persian blogs. Through the lens of
psychiatry, the book reveals how
historical experiences are
negotiated and how generations
are formed.
Prof Veena Das, of John Hopkins
U n i ve r s i t y, s a i d : “ Wi t h t h e
exquisite literary sensibility of a
writer and the analytical astuteness
of a scientist, Orkideh Behrouzan
has written an exceptional book
that brings the experiences of
psychiatry and individuals' need for
improvisation in an uncertain
w o r l d a l i v e t o t h e r e a d e r.
Navigating between the
experiences of different
generations of Iranians, this book
provides one
of the most
compelling
accounts I
have read of
h
o
w
historical
a
n
d
Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
“With the exquisite
literary sensibility of
a writer and the
analytical astuteness
of a scientist,
Orkideh Behrouzan
has written an
exceptional book.”
psychological experiences fold and
refold into everyday life. In its
execution of this difficult project,
the book breaks all boundaries
between disciplines, and between
expert knowledge and lay
knowledge. A splendid
achievement.”
Behrouzan’s most recent book talk
was at SOAS on 7 March 2016.
BIOETHICS
SPECIAL ISSUE
Dr Annette Rid has guest-edited a
special issue of the journal Bioethics
with Dr Seema Shah (University of
Washington, Seattle) focused on
the social value of research.
Rid comments: “Social value is
widely acce pted, but rarely
questioned as a benchmark of
ethical research. International and
national research ethics guidelines
and regulations presume that the
value of research to society is
critically important for selecting
study populations, justifying risk
imposition, and determining the
acceptable level of net risk. Yet,
there is a limited amount of
scholarship exploring what the
‘social value requirement’ entails or
what its normative status should be
in research ethics. This special issue
of one of the leading bioethics
journals compiles nine original
papers addressing these questions.”
GHSM Spring 2017 Newsletter | www.kcl.ac.uk/ghsm
PRAINSACK
LAUNCHES NEW
BOOK
Continued from Page 1: In their new
book Solidarity in Biomedicine and
Beyond, Prof Barbara Prainsack and
Prof Alena Buyx argue that a
solidarity-based perspective can
help us to find new ways to address
pressing problems. Exemplified by
three case studies from the field of
biomedicine – databases for health
and disease research, personalised
healthcare, and organ donation –
the book explores how solidarity
can make a difference in how we
frame problems, and in the policy
solutions that we can offer.
Praising the book, Daniel
Callahan, President Emeritus of
the Hastings Center, New York,
said: “Solidarity in Biomedicine and
Beyond effectively takes on and
combines two complex issues of
our times. How ought we best
understand the idea of human
solidarity in the face of cultural
trends that separate and often
badly divide us? And how best to
bring that understanding to bear
on the great challenges, for good or
ill, of the rapid and consequential
changes for health care of progress
“Prainsack and Buyx’
insights and careful
analysis take us a long
way down a winding
modern road into the
future.” in genetics and other rapidly
changing technologies? Prainsack
and Buyx’ insights and careful
analysis take us a long way down a
winding modern road into the
future.” CURRENT
ANTHROPOLOGY
SPECIAL ISSUE
Dr Carlo Caduff has guest-edited a
special issue of Current Anthropology
on ‘New Media, New Publics?’
with Dr Charles Hirschkind and
Dr Maria José de Abreu.
The open-access issue, published in
February 2017, examines how
publics are brought into being
through historically specific media
practices. Caduff says: “It treats
the question of new media as an
invitation to explore changing
conditions of communication
across a number of ethnographic
locations, and it argues that these
changing conditions have
ch a l l e n g e d o u r c a p a c i t y t o
understand the nature of publics.
None of the contributors perceives
new media as a coherent object of
attention that can easily be isolated
as an entity; nor do the
contributors locate its novelty in its
digital for mat. Instead, they
examine modes of mediation that
entail the technological but are not
reducible to it. This approach
allows scholars to keep the referent
of new media open and remain
attentive to emerging forms of
public life that are working outside
of or adjacent to the logics of both
the digital and the technological.”
The issue draws on a symposium
organised by Caduff, Hirschkind
and José de Abreu in Sintra,
Portugal in March 2015. The special issue treats the question of new
media as an invitation to explore changing
conditions of communication across a number of
ethnographic locations.
Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
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GHSM Spring 2017 Newsletter | www.kcl.ac.uk/ghsm
JOURNAL OF
BIOETHICAL
INQUIRY SPECIAL
ISSUE
Dr Silvia Camporesi has guestedited a special issue of the Journal
of Bioethical Inquiry with Professor
Mark Davis (Monash University)
and Dr Maria Vaccarella (Bristol
University). The issue, titled ‘Public
Trust in Expert Knowledge:
Narrative, Ethics and
Engagement,’ was launched at
King’s on 8 February 2017, and is
the first of its kind to examine the
ethics of public trust in expert
knowledge systems in emergent
and complex global societies.
Through an interdisciplinary
approach, it draws from
contributions in bioethics, the
social sciences and the medical
humanities. The launch was
sponsored by the KISS-DTC
Doctoral Training Centre.
ESRC-DFID REPORT
ON HEALTH AND
DEVELOPMENT
Dr Sridhar Venkatapuram led on
the formal review of social science
research in Sub Saharan Africa
and South Asia funded by the
ESRC-DFID Joint Fund for
Poverty Alleviation Research over a
ten-year period. The final report –
Health and Development Evidence
Synthesis Research Award – describes
how nearly 70 out of 122 research
projects funded have direct and
indirect implications for health and
how they have helped to
understand the links and pathways
between poverty and health.
The report concludes that ESRCDFID funded research has made a
significant contribution to global
health discussions, the evidence
base on poverty alleviation, health
a n d d e v e l o p m e n t b r o a d l y.
Evidence has been generated
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across a range of areas such as
health services, poverty and health,
and on the links between nonhealthcare policies and health.
Given that health is fundamental to
poverty alleviation, a key takeaway
from the report is that health
related information should be
captured in future research projects
irrespective of their primary focus.
WIRED ARTICLE BY
B&S ALUMNUS
MA Bioethics and Society alumnus
Rich Wordsworth published an
article in Wired magazine in
September 2016, asking whether
3D-printed organs could be
medicine’s next grisly black market.
The report is available on the
ESRC website. See also the
accompanying blog post: ‘What
does a decade of social science
research tell us about health?’
BMJ EDITORIAL
LED BY DOCTORAL
STUDENT
CHARLTON
Doctoral student Victoria Charlton
is the first author of a 22 March
2017 editorial in the British Medical
Journal. The piece – entitled ‘Cost
effective but unaffordable: An
emerging challenge for health
systems’ – takes issue with NICE's
and NHS England’s new budget
impact test for new health
technologies, as it implies that some
patients will have delayed access to
technologies simply because they
suffer from common diseases. The
piece was written with the KCL/
UCL Social Values and Health
Priority Setting group.
MOTHERBOARD
ARTICLE BY B&S
STUDENT
MSc Bioethics and Society student
A l ex Pe a rl m a n p u bl i s h e d a
commentary piece on the
Motherboard blog entitled ‘A
groundbreaking report on gene
editing says we shouldn’t create
enhanced humans’ on 14 February
2017 following the release of the
National Academies of Science
report on gene editing.
Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
PLOS MEDICINE
2016 END-OFYEAR EDITORIAL
At the end of each year, the editors
of PLOS Medicine – one of the
leading general medical journals –
invite a small number of experts to
reflect on key developments from
the year. Dr Annette Rid was
invited to contribute to the
2016 end-of-year editorial on
equity in health, addressing ethical
challenges in research on the recent
Ebola and Zika epidemics.
GHSM Spring 2017 Newsletter | www.kcl.ac.uk/ghsm
RID PUBLISHES
NEW BOOK
What is a just way of spending
public resources for health and
health care? Several significant
answers to this question are under
debate. Public spending could aim
to promote greater equality in
health, for example, or maximize
the health of the population, or
provide the worst off with the best
possible health. Another approach
is to aim for each person to have
‘enough’ so that her health or
access to health care does not fall
under a critical level. This latter
approach is called sufficientarian. The new volume, What is enough?
Sufficiency, justice, and health, co-edited
by Drs Annette Rid and Carina
Fourie (University of Washington,
Seattle) and published by Oxford
University Press, provides the first
in-depth discussion of the
sufficientarian approach and its
implications for the just allocation
of public resources for health or
healthcare. In fifteen original
contributions, the book establishes
the sufficientarian approach as
ethically sound and practically
promising, and thereby opens up a
new subfield of scholarship in
bioethics. Advance praise includes:
“first of its kind … likely to
generate a lot of interest among
political philosophers and
bioethicists … [and] become a key
reference point” (Shlomi Segall,
… will bring much needed clarity
to the general debate about health
justice and show the importance of
approaching the topic with health
sufficiency at the forefront of
discussion” (Jonathan Wolff,
University of Oxford).
A ‘sneak preview’ plenary session
at the 2016 World Congress of
Bioethics attracted an audience of
around 80-100 congress
participants.
B&S ALUMNA
QUOTED IN
BRITISH
PSYCHOLOGICAL
SOCIETY ARTICLE
Hebrew University); “major step
forward in our understanding of
the ethics of allocating scarce
health care resources” (Roger
Crisp, University of Oxford); “bold
and highly original contributions
MA Bioethics and Society alumna
Rose Mortimer’s dissertation was
quoted extensively in a recent
British Psychological Society article.
The article, on bulimia nervosa
entitled ‘The ugly stepsister of the
eating disorder family,’ featured
Mortimer’s dissertation research
where she interviewed young adults
with ‘normal BMI’ who
had been diagnosed with an eating
disorder in the past 5 years on the
concept of ‘recovery.’
OUTREACH
CAPACITY
BUILDING
WORKSHOPS IN
PALESTINE
In December 2016 and February
2017, Dr Hanna Kienzler taught
two workshops as part of the
Lancet Palestinian Health Alliance
(LPHA) capacity strengthening
activities at the Institute of
Community and Public Health
(ICPH) at Birzeit University in
occupied Palestinian territory. The
workshops focused on publishing
articles based on qualitative data
and on communicating research
findings at academic conferences.
Each workshop was attended by
around fifteen motivated students
and researchers from Birzeit’s
various departments (including the
Media Development Center, the
Center for Continuing Education,
the Urban Planning Department,
the Chemistry Department and
ICPH), all of whom work in one
way or another on health-related
topics. The workshops explored
issues related to ‘knowledge
production’ and experimented with
writing and presentation styles and
skills during more practical sessions
focusing on academic writing as
well as poster and oral
presentations.
Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
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GHSM Spring 2017 Newsletter | www.kcl.ac.uk/ghsm
The GHSM community gives a large number of lectures,
talks and presentations at conferences, workshops,
seminars and summer schools around the globe. In this
section, we highlight some of the activities our colleagues
are up to outside of the academy.
DAVIS POLICY
BRIEFINGS
LENTZOS POLICY
BRIEFINGS
Dr Courtney Davis was invited to
speak at a conference jointly
organised by the European Public
Health Association (EPHA) and
the Polish Per manent
Representation to the EU on
‘Healthy Innovation for All’ in
Brussels on 29 November 2016.
On 6 October 2016, Dr Filippa
Lentzos briefed delegations to the
71st Session of the United Nations
General Assembly First Committee
in New York on synthetic biology.
Lentzos also briefed the United
Nations Secretar y-General’s
Advisory Board on Disarmament
Matters on cyber threats to
biosecurity on 25 January 2017 at
its 67th Session in Geneva.
On 8 December 2016, Davis was
invited to participate in a workshop
o n ‘A d a p t i v e P a t h w a y s t o
Medicines Authorization,’ jointly
org anized by the European
Medicines Agency and the
European Commission, following
her article on this topic published
in the BMJ in August last year.
STATEMENT TO
THE UNITED
NATIONS
Dr Filippa Lentzos delivered a
s t at e m e n t t o t h e Rev i e w
Conference of the Biological
Weapons Convention at the
United Nations in Geneva on 8
November 2016. The statement
was co-written with colleagues
from the London School of
Economics and Political Science
and University College London
and was given on behalf of the
University of London.
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NICE
CONSULTATION
RESPONSE
PhD student Victoria Charlton
and Dr Annette Rid have led the
preparation of a detailed response
to a joint consultation by the
National Institute of Health and
Care Excellence (NICE) and NHS
England on changes to NICE’s
technology appraisal process. The
submission was based on two
meetings of the KCL/UCL Social
Values and Health Priority Setting
group, which meets regularly to
discuss current issues in decisionmaking about health resource
allocation. The group’s submission
highlighted several ethical issues
associated with the proposed
changes, arguing that the
introduction of a new ‘budget
impact threshold’ for technologies
approved by NICE could lead to
patients who suffer from common
conditions being unfairly
discriminated against. An editorial
article further exploring these
issues was published in the 20
March 2017 issue of the British
Medical Journal. For more, see the
Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
3 March 2017 GHSM blog post by
Victoria Charlton.
INSTITUTE OF
PUBLIC HEALTH
LECTURE
Dr Jennifer Dowd gave an invited
lecture at the Cambridge Institute
of Public Health on 23 November
2016. The lecture was titled
‘Infectious links between social
factors and chronic diseases.’
EXPERT BRIEFING
ON GLOBAL
HEALTH SECURITY
D r F i l i p p a L e n t zo s b r i e f e d
representatives from ministries of
health, medical associations and
the World Health Organisation on
biorisks management at the
Geneva Centre for Security Policy
on 8 February 2017. Lentzos also
briefed representatives from
ministries of defence and foreign
affairs on biorisks management at
the Geneva Centre for Security
Policy on 21 February 2017.
NUFFIELD COUNCIL
ON BIOETHICS
BRIEFING
Drs Ann Kelly and Annette Rid
advised the Nuffield Council on
Bioethics on the ethics of
conducting research during global
health emergencies during a
December 2016 workshop on
“Conducting research and
innovation in the context of global
health emergencies: What are the
ethical challenges?” Kelly provided
input on the tensions between
responding to emergencies and
conducting research. Rid
commented on the ethical
challenges of conducting and
governing research in global health
emergencies. GHSM Spring 2017 Newsletter | www.kcl.ac.uk/ghsm
FUND FOR
POVERTY
ALLEVIATION
INTERVIEW
In an interview posted on youtube
on 21 September 2016, Dr Sridhar
Venkatapuram talks about the joint
fund research project he was
i nvo lved i n th at wo rk ed o n
developing a global health
capabilities approach – a
conceptual approach to
understanding and addressing
global health inequalities and
j u s t i c e . H e r e fl e c t s o n t h e
background of the project, the
‘pathways to impact’ plan used,
significant impacts that have
occurred and where the research is
heading now. The project ran from
2008-2010. The interview was
conducted at the ESRC-DfID Joint
Fund for Poverty Alleviation
Research conference ‘Lessons from
a Decade’s Research on Poverty:
Innovations, Engagement and
Impact,’ 16-18 March 2016 in
Pretoria, South Africa. digital magazine, on gender and
sports. The essay, titled ‘Who is a
sportswoman?’ focuses on sports
culture and gender binaries, and
highlights how elite female athletes
are subjected to invasive gender
tests, and hormone treatments if
they fail. The essay was published
on 28 February 2017 and is freely
available online.
INPUT TO
INTERNATIONAL
ETHICAL
GUIDELINES
After four years of work and
international consultation, the
Council for International
Organizations of Medical Sciences
(CIOMS), in collaboration with the
World H ealth Org an ization ,
published its revised international
ethical guidelines for health-related
research involving humans.
NEAR-FUTURE
FICTIONS
Dr Christine Aicardi contributed to
the first ‘Near-Future Fictions’ event
at Virtual Futures Salon
(@VirtualFutures) on 7 March
2017. She read ‘The Tablet
Stroker,’ a short story about a
bipolar cognitive computer strongly
inspired by her work in the Human
Brain Project. Aicardi comments:
“It was an exhilarating and
rewarding experiment in literary
engagement, which also generated
precious contacts for future
research.”
PROVOCATIVE
AEON ESSAY
Dr Silvia Camporesi published an
essay in Aeon, a not-for-profit
POLICY BRIEFS ON
BIODEFENCE
There has been a dramatic increase
in biodefence activities and in the
number of facilities and researchers
working with dangerous pathogens
around the world. T his has
generated trade-off risks related to
safety, security, responsible science
and transparency. Dr Filippa
Lentzos outlines these risks and
what states can do to mitigate
against them in the policy brief 21st
Century Biodefence: Risks, Trade-offs &
Responsible Science, the third in a
series produced by the Oslo-based
International Law & Policy Institute
(ILPI) for the Biological Weapons
Convention Review Conference,
published in November 2016.
On-site peer review and
transparency visits play a significant
role in managing biodefence tradeoff risks. Dr Lentzos described and
analyses her observations of a twoday transparency exercise to a
biodefence facility involving experts
from 20 state parties in EU NonProliferation Consortium Policy
Brief No.52, Increasing Transparency in
Biodefence: A 2016 Visit to a German
Military Medical Biodefence Facility,
published in November 2016.
FILM SCREENING
AND PANEL
DISCUSSION
The guidelines are highly regarded
for providing internationally vetted
ethical principles and detailed
commentary on how these
principles should be applied, with
particular attention to conducting
research in low- and middle-income
countries. Dr Annette Rid was a
member of the working group
revising the guidelines. Dr Filippa Lentzos organized and
moderated a film screening and
panel discussion at the United
Nations in Geneva with the
producer of the BBC4
documentary ‘Inside Porton Down:
Britain’s Secret Weapons Research
Facility’ and a senior representative
from Dstl, Porton Down on 8
November 2016. Opening remarks
were provided by the UK
Ambassador to the Conference on
Disarmament.
Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
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GHSM Spring 2017 Newsletter | www.kcl.ac.uk/ghsm
EVENTS
ANNUAL PUBLIC LECTURE BY
PROF EMILY MARTIN
Professor of Anthropology Emily Martin from New York
University gave this year’s GHSM’s Annual Public
Lecture on 17 October 2016. The lecture, titled
‘Objectivity and trained judgement: toward an
ethnography of experimental psychology,’ drew on Prof
Martin’s current research on the history of the human
subject in experimental psychology. How and why did
early anthropologists and psychologists imagine that the
complex social lives of human beings could be captured
in experiments organised around dependent and
independent variables? Were the social lives of subjects
actually extinguished in these experimental models or do
traces always remain even today? What are the
implications of such traces for a science whose findings
exercise immense influence in contemporary daily life,
positing knowledge about cognition, emotion,
perception, and so on?
Dr Martin initially learned about the field by serving as a
volunteer subject in a variety of kinds of psychological
experiments. Over the last couple of years she has taken
courses in advanced cognitive neuroscience and set up
observational research in laboratories. She has
conducted ethnographic participant observation with
several experimental psychologists, working on attention,
memory, and a variety of cognitive processes. She is
currently working on a book manuscript based on this
research, under the working title Experiments of the mind.
Previous publications include: The Woman in the Body: A
cultural Analysis of Reproduction (1987), awarded the Society
for Medical Anthropology’s Eileen Basker Prize for
outstanding research in gender and health; Flexible Bodies:
Tracking Immunity in America from the Days of Polio to the Age
of AIDS (1995); Bipolar Expeditions: Mania and Depression in
American Culture (2007), winner of the 2009 Diana
Forsythe Prize for the best book of feminist
anthropological research on work, science, and
technology.
WORKSHOP: MEASURING
GLOBAL HEALTH
On 26-27 January 2017, Dr David Reubi organised an
international workshop on the political, social and ethical
aspects of metrics and quantification practices in global
health, with colleagues from McGill and Queen Mary.
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Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
T h e We l l c o m e Tr u s t f u n d e d eve n t b ro u g h t
epidemiologists and public health experts together with
social scientists and historians to explore how global
health metrics are produced: What are the political
discourses, institutional infrastructure and statistical
techniques that make quantification in global health
possible? What do these metrics count and what is
excluded? What types of numerical evidence have more
political traction? And, how do metrics transform the
way global health advocacy, politics and management is
done? WORKSHOP: INTERROGATING
GLOBAL HEALTH
On 2-3 February 2017, Drs David Reubi, Hanna
Kienzler and Ann Kelly organised GHSM’s first joint
workshop with CERMES3, Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique, in Paris. The workshop focused
on ‘global health’ as an obscure object that has become
all-pervasive over the last 20 years, progressively
displacing previously dominant concepts like
international health and tropical medicine. From
philanthropic efforts to improve lives in the global South
to overseas assistance programmes to build hospitals and
international research partnerships to develop cures for
neglected diseases – everything is now subsumed under
the notion of global health. The purpose of the
workshop was to explore what ‘global health’ is and how
we should go about interrogating and/or contributing to
it. Reflecting and making the most out of CERMES3
and GHSM’s key capacities and strengths, the workshop
focused on three core areas: 1) biomedical innovations
and regulatory environments; 2) cultures of global
mental health; and 3) expertise and the government of
population health.
GHSM Spring 2017 Newsletter | www.kcl.ac.uk/ghsm
UPCOMING CONFERENCE:
GLOBAL AGEING
King’s Centre for Global Ageing, in collaboration with
t h e Ro y a l S o c i e t y o f M e d i c i n e , w i l l h o s t
a flagship conference, Global Ageing: Challenges and
opportunities, on 24-25 April 2017. As the world stands
on the threshold of a great demographic transformation,
the number of people aged 65 or older is projected to
grow from an estimated 524 million in 2010 to nearly 1.5
billion in 2050. From China to South Africa, across
urban, rural and conflict affected settings, ever-growing
ageing communities face challenges and foster new
opportunities for effective care. The Global Ageing
conference will bring together international experts to
debate issues surrounding access to medicines and
innovations for chronic conditions, work and retirement
around the world, HIV and ageing, older peoples’
vulnerabilities in armed conflicts and future policies for
dementia care.
UPCOMING EVENTS:
The Depar tment hosts a
number of Research Seminars
on cutting edge research
throughout the year. They
provide a regular focus for our
Department and students to
come together with others
from the wider research
community for stimulating
discussion and debate. Our
most recent seminar was
given by Dr Nancy Campbell of
the Department of Science
a n d Te c h n o l o g y St u d i e s
at Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute on 8 March 2017, who
presented her work
on ‘Approaching the Ineffable:
Instruments and tools used in
psychopharmacological
research, 1950-1970.’ Audio
recordings of past talks are
available on our website.
The CMP conversations are a
more intimate series of
meetings with distinguished
scholars focusing on the
themes of culture, medicine
and power. Draft papers are
usually circulated in advance.
Visit the GHSM website or
contact [email protected]
for more information.
The London Bioethics
Colloquium is a series of talks
jointly organised by King’s and
University College London staff
that link individuals and groups
working on bioethics, public
health ethics and global ethics.
These past two terms have
seen presentations from Dr
Octavio Ferraz, Dr Jochen
Vollmann, Dr Arnon Keren, Dr
Garrett Brown and Dr Emily
McTernan. Sessions take place
on the first Thursday of the
month during term time. Visit
the GHSM website or
contact [email protected] for more information.
Dialogues on Critical Global
Health is a new seminar series
jointly organised by King’s and
London School of Hygiene &
Tropical Medicine staff that
brings together criticallyminded social scientists, public
health experts and
practitioners to debate key
areas of concern for global
health today and reflect on
how these should be
approached and explored. The
series was launched on 6
December 2016 with a
presentation and dialogue
from Dr Frank Kelly and Dr
Emma Garnett about their
work on air pollution, climate
change and global health.
Topics to be covered over the
coming months include
pandemic emergencies; war,
refugees and health; noncommunicable diseases
b e t w e e n a ffl u e n c e a n d
neglect, anti-microbial
resistance; mental health.
Contact [email protected]
or [email protected] for
more information.
Global Ageing and Health is a
seminar series jointly
organised by King’s and
London School of Economics
ALPHA research group staff.
Speakers over the last two
terms have included Dr
Ginevra Floridi, Dr Giorgio Di
Gessa, Dr Vahé Nafilyan, Dr
Tim Bruckner, Dr George
Ploubidis and Dr Bernard
Casey. Please check the
ALPHA website for updates on
these events. They are free
and open to all; registration is
not required.
We also organise: work-inprogress seminars where
members of the Department
discuss drafts of their work;
research initiatives for faculty
and students to discuss topical
social, ethical and political
issues in health and medicine;
a Grant Writing Academy
where peers provide support
for other members of the
Department in the
development of grant
proposals at the mid to late
stage of the process; and
various specialised
workshops, a sample of which
you can read about in the
events section.
Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
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GHSM Spring 2017 Newsletter | www.kcl.ac.uk/ghsm
EXCURSIONS
GHSM regularly organises historical walks or trips to London’s many museums, collections
and exhibitions that place medicine and healthcare in a broader historical and social context.
MEDICAL LONDON
EXCURSIONS
The most recent Medical London Excursion, in
February 2017, visited the Royal College of
Physicians for a tour of the museum and the
medicinal garden with over 1,300 plants, many still used
as medicines today. The museum contains rich
collections of medical history and practice, gathered over
five centuries since being founded by Henry VIII. The
Royal College of Physicians’ building has a fascinating
architectural history too, often voted as one of the top
modernist buildings in London. The tour included the
temporary exhibition A cabinet of rarities: The curious
collections of Sir Thomas Browne. This exhibition ‘…
explores RCP physician, philosopher, collector, and
polymath Thomas Browne’s curious approach to the
world through his writing and his collection. His
collection reveals a fascinating perspective on 17thcentury scientific and medical research.’ For more, see
the 14 February 2017 GHSM blog post by Priya
Umachandran.
In October 2016, GHSM staff and students visited
King’s College London’s Museum of Life Sciences. The
museum explores animal, human and plant diversity,
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16
Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
with collections originating from research carried out at
King’s. These collections include botany, zoology,
pharmacology, microscope slides and craniofacial
specimens. A tour from the curatorial staff described
how these animal specimens were used for research into
human health. The visit was followed by a stop at the
King’s Science Gallery to see the intriguing art
installations and events of its Mouthy exhibit, examining
the mouth from science and art perspectives, before the
group moved on to a more informal pub setting. For
more, see the 10 November 2016 GHSM blog post by
Priya Umachandran.
Another recent Medical London Excursion explored the
role London played in the anatomical discoveries of the
eighteenth century. With the expert guidance of Dr
Richard Barnett – author of several books on the history
of health and medicine, and a professional guide as well
as a lecturer at the University of Cambridge – GHSM
discovered that these gory anatomical advances were not
just the private pursuit of physicians and surgeons.
Lectures, operations and even dissections were
performed openly in the public gaze, and artists,
aristocrats and the thrill-seeking demi-monde flocked to
witness dissections, operations and lectures by the stars
of the day.
GHSM Spring 2017 Newsletter | www.kcl.ac.uk/ghsm
NUFFIELD COUNCIL ON
BIOETHICS VISIT
On 14 February 2017, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics
opened its doors to students on the MSc in Bioethics &
Society and MSc in Global Health & Social Justice.
Communication Officer Ranveig Svenn Berg and
Research Officers Anna Wilkinson and Bettina
Schmietow welcomed the GHSM students. Anna
Wilkinson presented the work of the Nuffield Council on
non-invasive prenatal testing and Bettina Schmietow
presented the work of the Nuffield Council on genome
editing technologies. The visit was organized by Dr Silvia
Camporesi and Dr Federica Lucivero.
EXHIBITION VISIT TO BEDLAM:
THE ASYLUM AND BEYOND
On 25 October 2016, our second year undergraduates
visited the Wellcome Trust exhibition Bedlam: The
asylum and beyond. The exhibition followed the rise and
fall of the mental asylum and explored how it has shaped
the complex landscape of contemporary mental health.
Today, asylums have largely been consigned to history
but mental illness is more prevalent than ever, as our
“I really enjoyed the
excursion as I was able to
situate some of the ideas
and notions of mental
health discussed in class.”
culture teems with therapeutic possibilities: from
prescription medications and clinical treatment to
complementary medicines, online support, and spiritual
and creative practices. Against this background, the
exhibition interrogated the original ideal that the asylum
represented – a place of refuge, sanctuary and care –
and asked whether and how it could be reclaimed.
Through guided tours our students learned more about
an important period in the history of mental healthcare
i n t h e U K a n d h ow i t c o n t i nu e s t o s h a p e
today’s landscape; and they were encouraged to imagine
possible alternatives. The excursion also offered our
students the opportunity to think more about and make
connections with several key topics in their
current curriculum, and it spurred many interesting
discussions afterwards and in class. One student commented: “I really enjoyed the excursion
as I was able to situate some of the ideas and notions of
mental health discussed in class. Quite often mental
health can be reduced to a condition, and therefore
masks the individual. But some of the works involved a
description of experiences that the mental health sufferer
themselves wished to engage in – this was very
informative.”
MUSEUM VISIT: THE
HUNTERIAN MUSEUM OF
SURGERY
Excursions also form an integral part of the Global
Health Summer School, which last summer saw thirty
students from across the world come together to learn
about the sociology of health. The students were taken
on a guided tour of the vast collection of medical
specimens at the Hunterian Museum of Surgery on
Lincoln’s Inn Field, where they were, amongst other
things, introduced to the 7 feet 7 inches skeleton of
Charles Byrne and the tale of the ‘Irish Giant.’ For
more, see the 23 August 2016 GHSM blog post by
Pennie Quinton.
Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
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GHSM Spring 2017 Newsletter | www.kcl.ac.uk/ghsm
UNDERGRADUATES
GLOBAL HEALTH SOCIETY:
THE YEAR IN REVIEW
By Rachael Healy
King’s Global Health Society is a student society that
celebrates the interdisciplinary nature of health from
social science perspectives, and runs alongside the
Department’s undergraduate programme. GHS provides
a platform to students with a keen interest in the
socioeconomic, political and cultural determinants of
global health to come together at regular events to raise
awareness, and to share ideas and experiences.
GHS has had a busy year so far. We kicked off the
academic year by inviting all our members and new
students to a Pizza Party welcome event, followed by a
get-together at our local watering hole, The Understudy,
at the National Theatre. It was great to get to know new
students, both from within the GHSM Department and
elsewhere, who are all passionate about global health.
We hosted a very successful event in October, called
Black Mental Health Matters, where we were joined by
three wonderful panellists who each spoke about
how mental health issues disproportionately affect people
of colour. The discussions were informative and the
turnout was great, with a local councillor stopping by to
hear from our students and to suggest ways in which
young people can get involved in advocacy and the
politics around mental health stigma.
Some of our members were lucky enough to represent
GHS at the Humanitarian Congress in Berlin, a two-day
conference organised by the German Red Cross, MSF
and Doctors of the World. I think all of those who went
can agree that the experience was invaluable and
provided a real insight into how humanitarian aid works.
It was inspirational in thinking about where our futures
may lie after graduation.
“It truly had the feel of
having the best and the
brightest in the room,
troubleshooting the
challenges and limitations
of aid work.”
Our blog has not only a wide readership (reaching
students and the public alike), but also features weekly
pieces contributed by a diverse body of students and
spanning a range of health-related topics. We enjoyed a weekly Film Club through the first term,
where we watched and discussed global health-themed
movies - the movies covered a huge range of topics, from
the AIDS activism movement in the ‘80s and ‘90s,
female genital mutilation, drug resistance, and the
criminalisation of abortion. We also had a great social
with our fellow global health students from Queen
Mary’s, which was not only a fun night out, but also gave
us the chance to compare courses and talk global health.
Events this past term have included: an evening with
Ione Wells, founder of the Not Guilty campaign which
seeks to end sexual violence; ‘Health Care Under
Occupation,’ which looked at the difficulties faced when
providing healthcare in Palestine; and a ‘Decolonising
our curriculum’ event which looked at ways in which
academia and universities can become more inclusive for
all students.
NSS: HAVE YOUR SAY
The National Student Survey (NSS) is now open, offering our final years an opportunity to provide
information about their experiences as students. This information is used nationally to help
prospective students make informed decisions about their university studies. The information is
also a very important opportunity for GHSM to receive input from our very first cohort of
undergraduate students about the things they’ve liked about their time with us, and about areas
where we could focus to enhance our students’ experiences. All 3rd year undergraduates are
eligible to take part. It takes about 5 minutes to complete and can be accessed by
visiting www.thestudentsurvey.com. The survey closes on Sunday 30 April 2017.
!
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Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
GHSM Spring 2017 Newsletter | www.kcl.ac.uk/ghsm
HUMANITARIAN AID
CONFERENCE IN BERLIN
and we would highly recommend it as an invaluable
learning experience and a great opportunity to network
with others in the field of humanitarian aid.”
Continued from Page 1: Rachel Healy, one of the six
GHSM undergraduates attending the Berlin conference,
commented: “We had the opportunity to sit in on a
number of sessions throughout the day, including focus
workshops on gender-based violence, access to
medicines, climate change and the changing roles of
local and international aid organisations. Discussions
were passionate, informative and felt productive – it truly
had the feel of having the best and the brightest in the
room, troubleshooting the challenges and limitations of
aid work. Overall, it was an excellent experience to learn
more about international aid from experts in the field,
travel to a new city in Europe and have the chance to
meet fellow global health enthusiasts.” Healy continues,
“The six of us decided to make a trip out of it, staying in
Berlin for a full four-day-weekend and even having the
chance to sample some of Germany’s wonderful food,
fun and beer after hours. The conference runs each year
SHOWCASING FORMER IBSC STUDENTS
Our iBSc students are making
an impact with their research.
Former iBSc student Labib
Hussain and Professor Anthea
Tinker gave a keynote lecture
at t h e 4 t h I n te r n at i o n a l
Conference on Geriatrics and
Gerontological Nursing in
October 2016. They spoke
about why medical students
should study social
gerontology, based on an
article they had published
earlier in the year in Age and
Ageing.
Hussain went on to present
alongside Prof Finbarr Martin
at the 12th Congress of the
European Union Geriatric
Medicine Society (EUGMS), in
Lisbon, Portugal. They worked
together as part of a Royal
College of Physician’s group on
the Falls and Fragility Audit
Programme (FFFAP). An
article is forthcoming in the
Journal of Clinical Medicine.
Former iBSc students Dr
Hannah Moorey and Sebastian
Zaidman have published a
cohort study with Consultant
Dr Thomas Jackson in BMC
Geriatrics. They studied the
relationship between
anticholinergic burden,
polypharmacy and delirium in
older patients.
Dr Moorey and Zaidman met
through the iBSc course at
King’s despite studying two
years apart at Birmingham
Medical School. Dr Moorey is
currently working as a doctor
i n t h e We s t M i d l a n d s ,
completing the Academic
Foundation Programme.
Sebastian Zaidman and
Anthea Tinker recently
published an article on
‘Computer classes for older
p e o p l e : M ot i vat i o n s a n d
outcomes’ in Working with
Older People.
William Tai – from the 2014-15
iBSc cohort – graduated from
medical school in July 2016 and
is currently working as a
doctor in East London. His
qualitative research project
completed during the iBSc on
the care providing motivations
of informal spousal dementia
carers across the dementiadisease course is forthcoming
in The Journal of Dementia
Care.
Tai carries his enthusiasm for
Gerontology – and Geriatrics
– forward in his new roles as a
peer reviewer for The Student
Doctor Journal and in leading a
clinical audit at his hospital
assessing doctor’s compliance
w i t h o b j e c t i ve c o g n i t i o n
screening.
Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
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GHSM Spring 2017 Newsletter | www.kcl.ac.uk/ghsm
POSTGRADUATES
LETTER FROM THE
FIELD By Cameron Spence
VIVA AND UPGRADE
SUCCESSES
Nicole Batsch successfully defended her thesis and was
awarded her PhD in Gerontology on 1 February 2017.
Her supervisors were Prof Jill Manthorpe (SCWRU) and
Prof Anthea Tinker. Valerie D’Astous passed her viva
with only minor corrections on 11 January 2017. Her
supervisors were Prof Karen Glaser and Prof Karen
Lowton. Giulia Cavaliere and James Fletcher
successfully upgraded on 30 November 2016 and 14
December 2016 respectively. Huge congratulations to
them all!
GHSM DOCTORAL SCHOOL
The GHSM Doctoral School organised a series of
workshops on academic skills over the past two terms for
our doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers. In
October 2016, Dr Orkideh Behrouzan and Dr Carlo
Caduff held a ‘Teaching Strategies’ workshop
considering what constitutes good teaching. In
November 2016, Dr David Reubi and Dr Carlo Caduff
led on a ‘Publication Strategies’ workshop exploring how
to survive peer review. In March 2017, Prof Barbara
Prainsack and Dr Carlo Caduff held a ‘Grant Writing
Strategies’ workshop exploring how to successfully obtain
funding.
CLINTON HEALTH ACCESS
INITIATIVE VISIT
On 26 October 2016, the Clinton Health Access
Initiative (CHAI) visited us. Caroline Middlecote, from
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Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
I completed a year of ethnographic fieldwork
with a Psychiatric Home Treatment Team in
South London for my doctoral research. My
role with the team saw me go out on daily
home visits with team members, sit in on
clinical handovers, trust meetings, Mental
Health Act Assessments, as well as other
activities. It was often challenging work that
required that I not only be an observer but a
participant in the actual clinical work of the
team.
During my time with the team, I developed
skills that are crucial to engaging in research
with service users and mental health
professionals. The ability to quickly develop
rapport and stay calm in strange situations
was key among these skills. I completed over
50 interviews with service users and team
members during my 130 days with the team.
the HIV Programs and two of CHAI’s Talent
Acquisition Managers, Sydney Leroy and Ndunge
Mwangi, were on campus to speak about the
organization, spotlight the HIV program and talk about
job opportunities.
The Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) was
founded in 2002 with a transformational goal: help save
the lives of millions of people living with HIV/AIDS in
the developing world by dramatically scaling up
antiretroviral treatment. Since its foundation, CHAI has
GHSM Spring 2017 Newsletter | www.kcl.ac.uk/ghsm
pursued several similarly ambitious goals, from scaling
up paediatric AIDS treatment in order to achieve equity
with adults in a time frame few thought possible, to
rapidly accelerating the rollout of new vaccines. Today,
CHAI operates in 33 countries across the developing
world and more than 70 countries are able to access
CHAI-negotiated price reductions, vaccines, medical
devices and diagnostics.
CAREER EVENTS
Term 2 saw a packed programme of career events for
GHSM postgrads: ‘Careers in think tanks’ (January),
‘Careers in European and international policy’ (January),
‘Careers in science and health policy’ (February),
‘Careers in global health’ (March), and ‘Careers in
bioethics’ (March). This was complemented by a series
of career skills events on ‘CVs and
applications’ (February), ‘Interviews’ (February),
‘Networking’ (February), and ‘Professional online
networking for your career’ (March).
INTERNSHIP AT THE TROPICAL
HEALTH EDUCATION TRUST
In summer 2016, part-time Bioethics & Society alumna
Maru Mormina worked as an intern with the Tropical
Health Education Trust.
“The internship was
the most enjoyable and
productive experience
of my whole time at
King’s!” While she was there she conducted a short evaluation of
the Trusts’ ‘training of trainers’ activities, and she wrote
this up as part of her final assignment for the Internship
Module. Following the internship, the Trust contacted
Mormina requesting her permission to translate her
report into specific guidelines for global health
partnerships. The Trust also suggested publishing the
report, enriched with some case studies, in the journal
Globalisation & Health, which it is guest editing. Mormina
has also been asked to do a webinar for the Trust.
Mormina comments: “I am very flattered that my work
is being used by practitioners and that it may be
published in a reputable academic journal. All in all, the
internship was the most enjoyable and productive
experience of my whole time at King’s! I could not
recommend the module highly enough.”
LETTER FROM THE
FIELD By Sebastián Rojas Navarro
I spent eight months conducting fieldwork in a
school in Santiago, Chile. During that time, I
participated in the everyday classroom
activities of six different classes, all composed
of children aged between 9 and 10. The
purpose of my ethnographic fieldwork was to
understand how stimulant medication was
deployed in this setting, and how it was used
and understood by medicated children, their
peers, and the adults present in the
classroom.
My research aims at understanding how the
use of psychostimulants by medicated
children allow us to witness how the use of
medication may enable new forms of agency.
According to what I got to observe during my
fieldwork, this renewed sense of agency is
deeply rooted in contextual factors, such as
the classroom setting, and cannot be reduced
to mere chemical processes triggered by the
medication inside the body.
Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
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GHSM Spring 2017 Newsletter | www.kcl.ac.uk/ghsm
LETTER FROM THE FIELD By James Rupert Fletcher
A big ‘ay up duck’ from Derby, an old industrial city
in the Midlands. I’ve been living here since
September, interviewing people with dementia and
their carers. Research often begins from
assumptions about care, so I’m asking people with
dementia to conceptualise their care for me. I ask
them who is important and I speak to those people.
The intention is twofold, accessing people with
dementia’s perspectives of care and showing that
those perspectives are valuable. Derby has
changed the nature of this work. For various
reasons (e.g. my estate’s apparent reverence for
generously hand-railed bungalows), I’ve ended up
waist-deep in the ‘field”’ when I’d only intended to
take a snapshot; an accidental ethnographer of
ageing minds. I’ve heard many stories of
relationships touched by dementia, from the
hilarious to the heart-breaking. Come May, I should
be back in London, sifting through an intimidating
pile of data and sharing those stories.
CAREER DESTINATIONS
MELISSA GAULE
Melissa Wood Gaule, a recent
Bioethics & Society alumna with a
background in clinical ethics and
patient advocacy, secured a job as a
consultant for Science Policy
Compass, a start-up bioethics
consultancy firm offering science
policy and bioethics support to the
bioscience sector.
Gaule comments: “After
the programme, I felt so
excited to start working
i n m y fi e l d a n d
immediately s tarted
applying for jobs…but I
got nothing but
rejections! To this day, I
have not been called for
a single interview. It is so
discouraging! Knowing
where to start and how
to make yourself stand
out is such a challenge,
especially if you are new
to a big city where the
job market is so
competitive.
My answer to this
problem was to start
building a network of
contacts that might be
able to help me along
the way. Finding the time
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Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
and the confidence to network with
the many special people we meet as
KCL students can be challenging
and uncomfortable, but it is worth
it!
“Our ability to
network is one of
our most
powerful tools as
postgraduates.”
Our ability to network is one of
our most powerful tools as
postgraduates.”
ELSA KRISTÍN
SIGURÐARDÓTTIR
Elsa Kristín Sigurðardóttir, a recent
Global Health & Social Justice
alumna, continues her interest and
participation in politics and more
specifically in the Icelandic
Pirate Party, whose platform is
GHSM Spring 2017 Newsletter | www.kcl.ac.uk/ghsm
based on pirate politics and direct
democracy. Sigurðardóttir says:
“ W h i l e I w a s fi n i s h i n g m y
dissertation at King’s the national
elections in Iceland were taking
place. Prompted by the Panama
Papers scandal, the elections were
happening a year earlier than
planned. I have been a listed
member of various political parties
since my teenage years, but within
the Pirate Party the opportunity to
be an active member is greater. I
got twenty-second on the list in my
jurisdiction after online voting. It
wasn’t enough to get me elected but
“Being an active
member of a very
active political party
makes you more able to
grasp current events
and to understand your
society.”
it got me a step closer to the swirl.
Being an active member of a very
active political party makes you
more able to grasp current events
and to understand your society.
N o w, p o s t election, the
debate among
the members and
the MPs of the
party is very
much alive on
the online forums
and at its social
events. An open
and socially
active party is an
important link
between citizens
and Parliament.”
ANDREA
BERKEMEIER
Andrea Berkemeier, a recent
Bioethics & Society alumna,
secured a job as a consultant for the
von Hippel-Lindau (VHL)
Alliance, the US nonprofit
organisation with whom she
partnered for her master’s research
in reproductive counselling for
young people diagnosed with VHL.
VHL is a genetic condition which
predisposes affected individuals to
develop tumour s—sometimes
cancer—in many organs of the
body. In her job, Berkemeier liaises
with the National Organization for
Rare Disorders which maintains the
VHLA patient databank platform,
e n s u r e s t h e r e s e a rc h
project aligns with IRB
approved research ethics,
and is currently overseeing
a new survey launch
which will provide patients
with opportunities to
submit more detailed
medical and lifestyle
histories.
Since VHL is a complex
condition, VHLA has
developed
the
inter national Clinical
Care Center (CCC)
endorsement, which helps
patients connect with
institutions that are
experienced in offering
outstanding coordinated patient
care. Berkemeier leads the renewal
process for established CCCs and
works to establish new centres
based on geographic needs. As part
of this process, she has helped
outline the prudent ethical, medical
and financial reasons why VHL
patients should receive their
screening and treatment at CCCs
as early as they are diagnosed
instead of waiting to be transferred
after a health crisis has developed.
This helps VHL patients receive
appropriate health management
independent of their postal address.
Berkemeier also works directly with
patients, serving as the first line of
support when they contact the
VHLA.While a patient may require
a referral to a more specialised
professional, Berkemeier views
every interaction with a patient, no
matter how brief, as an opportunity
to internalise the philosophy of
personalised medicine that she
desire to practice as a physician.
In July 2017, Berkemeier is
returning to her alma mater, the
University of Michigan. She has
been admitted to its prestigious
Medical School, one of the highest
ranked programmes in the US.
Warm congratulations and good
luck!
Berkemeier talks about her experience of
studying Bioethics & Society at King’s in
a short film available on the GHSM
website.
Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
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GHSM Spring 2017 Newsletter | www.kcl.ac.uk/ghsm
IN THE MEDIA
Dr Annette Rid was quoted in The
Sun newspaper in a 23 March 2017
article titled ‘NHS Gamble:
Patients being used as “bargaining
chips” to drive down the cost of
drugs in “flawed plan,” experts
warn.’
Prof John Abraham was
interviewed in the Sky Atlantic
documentary ‘Primodos: The
Secret Drug Scandal’ on 21 March
2017.
where Venkatapuram chaired the
opening panel.
Dr Wei Yang was quoted in an
article by the Economist
Intelligence Unit commissioned by
Medtronic for its report on ‘Valuebased Healthcare: A Global
Assessment’. The article is titled
‘China’s healthcare challenges: The
People’s Hospital of Yiyang County
in Henan Province.’
illness, and was on the expert
panel for the 5th and final episode,
discussing the influence that
culture has on mental illness and
mental health treatment.
Dr Filippa Lentzos was interviewed
in the German journal
Management & Krankenhaus in a 9
September 2016 article titled
‘Biologische Bedrohung: Dual-UsePotential von Infektionserregern.’
Prof Nikolas Rose was interviewed
on Australian ABC Radio on
neuroscience, risk and screening
on 14 March 2017.
Prof Nikolas Rose was interviewed
for a podcast on mental health and
urban policy on 16 March 2017 at
the ANU Crawford School of Public
Policy.
Dr Filippa Lentzos was featured in
the Norwegian newspaper Lister in
a 25 February 2017 article titled
‘Forsker på bruk av biologi som
våpen.’
Dr Filippa Lentzos was interviewed
in the German monthly
Wehrmedizinische Monatsschrift in
a 20 February 2017 article titled
‘Biologische Bedrohung: Dual-UsePotential von Infektionserregern.’
Dr Sridhar Venkatapuram was
quoted in The Times of India in an
11 February 2017 article covering
the Difficult Dialogues conference
Dr Dominique Behague
participated in the BBC World
Service series on mental health
called ‘The Borders of Sanity’
which aired on 11 September
2016. She was interviewed for the
fourth episode, questioning what
options people in Ghana have
when a person suffers mental
WEBSITE: www.kcl.ac.uk/ghsm
BLOG: https://globalhealthandsocialmedicine.com
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TWITTER: @GHSMatKCL
EDITORIAL TEAM: Charlotte Beames & Filippa Lentzos (Editor in Chief)
Undergraduate student Giulia
Impelluso was interviewed about
her summer internship and student
life in the department on King’s
Somaliland Partnership blog on 1
July 2016.