Interests

Policy and research

Have you one-off short and medium term health projects in mind but don't have the capacity or demand to make permanent appointment of staff to deliver them? I may be able to help. I am particularly interested in projects that concern cancer care and services for men and women aged 75 and over.

I am an experienced creative thinker on health and medical issues for small and medium sized health charities. I can organise and present strategic options to small organisations, as well as deliver practical information based projects or research assistance e.g. reviewing and summarising your key medical facts and sourcing new ones for information that supports your arguments in funding applications.

Does your health charity need evidence to support campaigns on behalf of your patient group? Have you wondered about using the Freedom of Information Act to do this, but are worried about the time it'll take or the vagaries of the process? Do you have concerns that using the Act might affect important funding or service delivery relationships?

You might need a 'secret agent'...... 

I am keen to turn my theoretical knowledge of the Freedom of Information Act, taught by Heather Brooke the journalist who exposed the MPs expenses scandal, into practical experience. My knowledge of official health data may show there is another way to the information you want but, if there isn't, I could help draft your question, identify where exactly to send it, oversee the process and obtain the results on your behalf, using my name as 'cover', protecting yours.

I can also research and draft patient information content for websites or leaflets.  

Health writing

Here are incomplete and brief pitches of my current journalistic interests. I have discovered an interest in the quirky end of medical science, which goes along with a previously existing interest in the daft end of medical history. The two come together in the history of clinical trials into which I am currently delving.

Which would you like to commission or have more detail on? There are any number of others still in my head, so do contact me.....

  • Why breast cancer charities are not good for women
  • Where's the heart in 'women's health'? - not to mention their minds, joints, livers, bowels and lungs
  • Why 'awareness raising' in health isn't working as it should.  
  • If cancer is a disease of ageing where are ageing men and women in cancer stories? 
  • Men and screening for aortic aneurysm
  • How to interpret 'family medical history'
  • Prostate disease in men (not just prostate cancer)
  • Risks of screening for cancer. 
  • Bowel cancer screening for men.  And women
  • I've got a menopause and I'm not afraid to use it
  • I've just hit 50 and am entering the Twilight Zone of peri-menopausal ageing.  (I think I'm supposed to develop a taste for velour, beige, day time TV and elasticated waists as well. We'll see.) Follow me as I check my healthy lifestyle against easily available responsible health advice from NHS Choices, health charities and the GP.  How should I get breast cancer concerns into proportion?  Just what are my cardiac risks?  Do I behave as healthily as I think I do?  Are there annoying inconsistencies in the advice which I have to unravel?  Just how much is there that I'm supposed to know?
  • How about a regular column on, for e.g. 'The Lives in the Day of a Waiting Room Chair'? Or on medical cliche of the week e.g. medically induced coma, on life support, the 'all clear' from cancer?
  • Consumer health - questions to ask, making informed choices
  • The history of men's health

If you'd like some quirky health and medicine topic I can do that too.