Public health and primary care lectures

Public Health and Primary Care inaugural professorial lectures

This series has now ended. Podcasts and vodcasts of many of the lectures are available.

Birth of a network: Developing Women's Health Research

Khalid Khan Professor of Women's Health and Clinical Epidemiology

Tuesday 7 June 2011, 5.30pm

Society wishes to base medical decisions on valid, reliable and generalisable research that delivers results in a timely fashion. Ingenuity may be required in developing study designs but conducting high quality studies with scarce resources is more difficult. Multicentre studies, first exemplified through the 1944 MRC's Patulin trial, can obtain results quickly and efficiently. This lecture will provide an overview of progress made in women's health trials, pointing the way forward for a clinical collaborative network in East London committed to recruiting women into research.

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Truth, commerce and the academy: when can we trust public health research?

Allyson Pollock Professor of Health Systems Research and Policy

Tuesday 17 May 2011, 5.30pm

Slaying poverty and inequality are the twin pillars of public health. Thus the good public health practitioner must formulate and design health policies to underpin mechanisms to redistribute resources more fairly. On the evidence available, universal, non-selective health systems are the surest means to this end. However, new and powerful commercial interests in the public health field have resulted in the introduction of market-based reforms in many countries’ health systems.

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A podcast of 'Truth, commerce and the academy' is available

Hunting for the causes of asthma and COPD: an epidemiologist’s journey

Seif Shaheen Professor of Respiratory Epidemiology

Tuesday 3 May 2011, 5.30pm

The causes of asthma, the commonest chronic disorder of childhood in the UK, remain elusive, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which will become the third commonest cause of death worldwide by 2020, cannot be attributed solely to smoking. Professor Shaheen will describe his collaborative research and career path as an epidemiologist trying to unravel the causes of these two conditions, with the ultimate aim of devising strategies for prevention. In particular, he will outline evidence to suggest that the origins of poor respiratory health may lie very early in life.

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A podcast of 'Hunting for the causes of asthma and COPD: an epidemiologist’s journey' is available

Why do we always end up here? Medicine’s conceptual cul de sacs and some off-road alternative routes

Trish Greenhalgh Professsor of Primary Health Care

Tuesday 8 March 2011, 5.30pm

With the best of motives, medicine has spent 20 years driving down the cul de sac of naïve rationalism with as much reflexive questioning of its own assumptions as Jeremy Clarkson on a test drive. Partly as a result of the dominance of epidemiology (which is, after all, big, quantitative, objective and heavily rule-bound, so it must be “robust”), medicine has come adrift from its humanistic roots, sold out to a reductive and technocratic model of professional practice and – some say – become the pawn of politicians and commercial interests. This lecture will draw on contemporary work in the humanities and social sciences to propose more fruitful directions of travel.

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A podcast of 'Why do we always end up here?' is available

Health and wellbeing in east London and what we can do about it

Ian Basnett Honorary Professor, Director for Public Health east London and the City

Tuesday 22 February 2011, 5.30pm

This lecture will discuss some of the origins of Public Health in east London and describe the current issues. It will use a number of case studies to show how public health in the NHS, local authorities and academics can work together to solve public health problems. 

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A podcast of 'Health and wellbeing in east London' is now available

Salt: Neptune's poisoned chalice

Graham MacGregor Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine

Tuesday 22 March 2011, 5.30pm

Mammals are designed to live away from the sea and do not eat salt. Unfortunately the Chinese 5000 years ago discovered that salt had the magic property of preserving food. Salt became of great economic, religious, and political significance, but at the cost of putting up our blood pressure - the major cause of strokes, heart failure and heart attacks. We are now eating 20 to 50 times more salt than we are designed to. 

Professor MacGregor is Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine and Honorary Consultant Physician at St George's Hospital, London.

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Having babies at older ages

Joan Morris Professor of Medical Statistics

Tuesday 5 April 2011, 5.30pm

It is well known that older mothers have a higher risk of having a baby with Down syndrome. But does the father’s age matter as well? And are the risks for other birth defects also higher? This talk will examine the risks to babies of older mothers and fathers.

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