Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
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- Type: Book x
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Life expectancy is about more than just health – it’s about the kind of society we live in. And in the early 2010s, after decades of continual improvement, life expectancy in the UK, USA and many other rich countries stopped increasing. For millions of people it actually declined. Despite hundreds of thousands of extra deaths, governments and officials remained silent.
Combining robust evidence with real-life stories, this book tells the story of how austerity policies caused this scandal. It argues that this shocking and tragic suffering was predictable, caused by a dereliction of duty from those in power.
The book concludes with an optimistic vision of what can be done to restore life expectancy improvements and reduce health inequalities.
Are you a health and social care commissioner navigating the ever-changing commissioning landscape? With challenges such as limited funding, changing demands and global pandemics, we need to be clear on why, what and how we commission effectively.
This book offers you a warm welcome into the often-complex world of healthcare commissioning. Amanda J. Hughes shares personal insights from her commissioning career and practical guidance that will demystify the commissioning cycle and ease the journey as you strive to achieve the best outcomes for the population.
This book will help you to ensure valuable resources are directed to those with most need, that care is fair and accessible and that the solutions you put into place are sustainable for the longer term.
Can society be healthy, and how? Is Britain a ‘healthy society’ in the 21st century?
When people ponder health, they usually consider the health of the individual, but individuals co-exist in a social environment so attention should be placed on the health of communities and populations.
Re-examining health, healthcare and societal health using the latest data and research, this book provides a clear, accessible account of the current state of play. Addressing definitions of health in individuals, communities and populations, definitions of society itself, changes in health over time and the contribution of healthcare to health and longevity, it also suggests ways of effectively tackling obstacles to improving health and healthcare in 21st century Britain.
The COVID-19 pandemic thrust fear into the heart of political debate and policy making. In the wake of the pandemic, it is critical to clarify the role of fear in these processes to avoid repeating past mistakes and to learn crucial lessons for future crises.
This book draws on case studies from across the world, including the UK, Turkey, Brazil and the US, to provide thought-provoking and practical insights into how fear and related emotions can shape politics under extraordinary and ordinary circumstances. Offering interdisciplinary perspectives from leading and emerging scholars in politics, philosophy, sociology and anthropology, the book enables a better understanding of post-pandemic politics for students, researchers and policy makers alike.
This book centres on women living with HIV in South Africa who have navigated affective relationships, activist networks, government institutions and global coalitions to transform health policies that govern access to HIV medicines. Drawing on 20 years of ethnographic and policy research in South Africa, Brazil and India, it highlights the value of understanding the embodied and political dimensions of health policy and reveals the networked threads that weave women’s precarity into the governance of technologies and the technologies of governance. It illuminates the entwined histories of health policy evolution, systemic inequality and everyday life and calls for a recognition of the embodied ramifications of democratic politics and global health governance.
By integrating medical anthropology with science studies and political theory, this book traces the history of the struggle to access HIV medicines in the Global South and brings it into the present by articulating the lessons learned by activists and policy makers engaged in shaping these vital health policies.
A public health crisis is gripping the UK. Improvements in life expectancy have stalled, health inequalities have widened, obesity and alcohol misuse are placing an increasing strain on health services and urban air pollution is now widely recognised as a serious health hazard. COVID-19 revealed the weaknesses of the UK's public health system, once thought to be among the best in the world.
Against this background, this book examines the organisational and political barriers to an effective public health system showcased through the UK. It urges that what is needed is a new social contract, in which health policy is truly public.
In its 75th anniversary year, this book examines the history, evolution and future of the NHS.
With contributions from leading researchers and experts across a range of fields, such as finance, health policy, primary and secondary care, quality and patient safety, health inequalities and patient and public involvement, it explores the history of the NHS drawing on narrative, evaluative and analytical approaches.
The book frames its analysis around the four key axes from which the NHS has evolved: governance, centralisation and decentralisation, public and private, and professional and managerial.
It will address the salient factors which shape the direction and pace of change in the NHS. As such, the book provides a long-term critical review of the NHS and key themes in health policy.
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-ND licence.
This book explores the concept of public trust in health systems.
In the context of recent events, including public response to interventions to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccination uptake and the use of health data and digital health, this important book uses empirical evidence to address why public trust is vital to a well-functioning health system.
In doing so, it provides a comprehensive contemporary explanation of public trust, how it affects health systems and how it can be nurtured and maintained as an integral component of health system governance.
Public trust in the scientific community is under extraordinary pressure. Crucial areas of human activity and public policy, such as education, universities, climate and health care are influenced by populist political strategies rather than evidence-based solutions. Moreover, data-driven methods are becoming increasingly subject to de-legitimisation.
This book examines potential remedies for improving public trust and the legitimacy of science. It reviews different policy approaches adopted by governments to incentivise the empowerment of stakeholders through co-production arrangements, participatory mechanisms, public engagement and interaction between citizens and researchers.
Offering an original analysis of the political roots of the governmental impact and engagement agenda, this book sheds much-needed light on the wider connections to democracy.
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
What does it mean to love a healthcare system?
It is often claimed that the UK population is unusually attached to its National Health Service and the last decade has seen increasingly visible displays of gratitude and love. While social surveys of public attitudes measure how much Britain loves the NHS, this book mobilises new empirical research to ask how Britain loves its NHS.
The answer delves into a series of public practices – such as campaigning, donating and volunteering within NHS organisations – and investigates how attitudes to the NHS shape patient experience of healthcare. Stewart argues that these should be understood as practices of care for, and contestation about the future of, the healthcare system.
This book offers a timely critique of both the potential, and the dysfunctions, of Britain’s complex love affair with the NHS.
