Social Medicine : What do you think?

The wealthiest 1% of Americans live 10 to 15 years longer than the poorest 1%

Being wealthy means staying healthy, according to a new series of studies.

These studies, in medical journal The Lancet, explored how economic inequality exacerbates health inequality. 

White coats for black lives | December 10, 2014.

“…I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick…

SALMA YAQOOB confronts Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith on poverty, austerity & and the government’s labelling of those on benefits as “scroungers” | BBC Question Time, 12 June 2014

“My full-time job is actually mental health. I have seen myself, how people have become suicidal. I have had to counsel people who have lost their loved ones who said they did not want to be a burden on their own families because the support has been taken away. These are very, very real issues. And it’s [cuts to benefits] being done in the name of austerity. We’ve had this drive of people being called scroungers when actually half of the people on benefits are pensioners, our pensioners in this country are not scroungers. 60% of people on benefits are in work, but the wages are not paying enough to feed their families.

Yet I’m sitting next to Iain Duncan Smith, who quite happily labels poor people as scroungers, when you claim £39 for a breakfast, like you can’t afford your own breakfast, when you live on your wife’s estate, and have taken £1.5 million of taxpayers money. That’s what I call scroungers, that’s what I call shirkers.”

So glad that Yaqoob said this. Like so many, I’ve been disgusted by the vilification of poor people under the current British government, and the political impunity the Lib/Cons have enjoyed as they wage their war on the British welfare system and the people it used to assist. Lord knows, back in 2012 that was basically all my tumblr was about. 

I’m elated that Yaqoob says what she came to say despite being interrupted by three different white men in under two minutes. See how they flail about trying to shut her down? Trying, and failing to close ranks. Their language intends to belittle her intelligence, accuracy and question her political maturity. “What a lot of nonsense” says Iain Duncan Smith again and again, as she backs him into a corner. The dimwit David Dimbleby, whose sole public function is to maintain the status quo, (in a very gentlemanly fashion) orders Yaqoob to answer the question. Surely a person with his journalistic experience knows that politicians reframe the question they’re asked and give the answer they came to give? It’s alright when white men with party backing/influence/money do this very thing, but apparently not when Yaqoob does. I’m sure the question was boring anyway. 

Poverty Is Literally Making People Sick Because They Can’t Afford Food

Income inequality is making us sick.

Well, it’s not making all of us sick. Only the poorest of us. That’s what a new paper in Health Affairs by Hilary Seligman, Ann Bolger, David Guzman, Andrea López, and Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo found they looked at when people go to the hospital for hypoglycemia (low blood sugar).

The basic idea is that people struggling to make it paycheck-to-paycheck (or benefits-to-benefits) might run out of money at the end of the month—and have to cut back on food. If they have diabetes, this hunger could turn into an even more severe health problem: low blood sugar. So we should expect a surge of hypoglycemia cases at the end of each month for low-income people, but not for anybody else.

John Legend tells it like is when it comes to mental health, addiction, poverty and incarceration. He opened up about his mother’s own struggles.