Medact

The Health for a Green New Deal campaign seeks to build mass support in the health community for a transformative Green New Deal and to organise health workers and students to advocate for a just transition to a zero-carbon society.

The Medact Climate & Health research cluster has been working on a briefing that sets out the public health case for a Green New Deal and sets out key actions that health workers and students can take to organise.

On 8th April we held an event to launch the briefing and we heard from a range of guest speakers and Medact activists from across the country, including: 

It is possible to create a society in which our collective safety and wellbeing are prioritised. Developing trusting, healthy relationships with all of our patients is essential to this work.  However, Prevent ─ with the government’s stated aim of identifying “vulnerability to radicalisation” ─ compromises all of this, and is a source of harm and increased marginalisation.  Why is the NHS the only healthcare system in the world with a legal obligation to engage with such a strategy? What aren’t you being told about Prevent in safeguarding training?  We hosted a training session for health workers to shed light on some unanswered questions about Prevent. At the training we heard from:  • Members of Medact’s Securitisation of Health Group (SHG) • Dr Tarek Younis ─ a cultural and clinical critical psychologist and lecturer in psychology • Marcelo Camus ─ member of Medact’s SHG, a social practice artist and co-founder and organiser of the Social Art Network • Reem Abu-Hayyeh ─ Campaigns and Programme Lead: Peace and Security at Medact

On the 16th February 2021 we held the online launch of of our latest briefing  ‘Health Versus Wealth? UK Economic Policy and Public Health During COVID-19’. 

The briefing considers how a false dichotomy between public health and economic wealth has contributed to the pandemic taking such a tragic course in the UK. It also considers how cuts to essential health and social services over decades and decades have torn at the social fabric of our communities ─ and what can be done right now to mend this fabric and build up our social immunity.  

We heard from a panel of experts on the subject, including:  

• Professor Christina Pagel, Professor of Operational Research at University College London and member of Independent Sage

• Christine Berry, trustee of Rethinking Economics, fellow of the Democracy collab and contributing editor of Renewal journal

• Dr Monica Sharman, an NHS junior doctor based in Yorkshire & Humber , Medact member and co-author of the briefing

• Daniel Carter, Research fellow in social epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Medact member and co-author of the briefing

Read the briefing: https://link.medact.org/healthvswealthbriefing 

Sign up for email updates from our Economic Justice & Health Group: http://link.medact.org/economicjustice​   

Sign up to email updates from our Medact Research Network: https://link.medact.org/researchnetwork

Find out more about joining Medact as a member: https://www.medact.org/membership/

On the 9th July 2020 we held an Action Call to build the Health Movement for a Green New Deal.

Here are some useful links shared in the Action Call.

On the 2nd July 2020 we held the online launch of our latest report ‘False Positives: the Prevent counter-extremism policy in healthcare’.

This report brings together new research that seeks to shed light on the implications of the Prevent duty in UK health services.

Prevent is a controversial strand of the government’s counter-extremism strategy that obliges public service providers and workers to ‘have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’.

Read the report and key findings: https://www.medact.org/prevent-report

Soon after the COVID-19 pandemic reached the UK, it became clear that the NHS was not sufficiently equipped or staffed to respond to the crisis.

In March, the government put out a call for industry to convert its production to manufacture crucial medical equipment, such as ventilators and PPE for frontline workers. To date, a number of arms and defence companies have responded to this call – alongside existing companies that manufacture medical equipment and others.

Workers at Lucas Aerospace called for exactly this kind of arms conversion back in 1976, when they produced an Alternative Corporate Plan – now known as the Lucas Plan.

In this webinar we discussed what a ‘just transition’ from industries that cause destruction to those that support peace and public health could and should look like.

Thank you to our expert speakers:

We apologise for the connectivity problems that obscured the later part of Hilary's talk!

Sign up at medact.org/emails to find out more about Medact's work bringing a health voice together for peace.

*(Dr Stuart Parkinson said that 1,000 direct jobs were lost in the UK arms industry at the end of the Cold War - it was actually 100,000)