Health care through the ‘lens of risk’: reflections on the recent series of four special issues

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

1. As I am retiring in March 2014, I have thrown academic caution to the wind in the final section.

2. A common feature which emerged from these interviews was accounts of reinvention as a risk social scientist after stumbling into this arena fairly inadvertently from other areas. For example, Alaszewski became interested in risk through talking to vulnerable adults with learning disabilities living in institutions; and Horlick-Jones’ work originated from his role as a policy adviser on disaster planning for the Greater London Council which earned him the press epithet of ‘Mr Disaster’. My own interest was triggered in the late 1980s when I heard adults with moderate learning disabilities and their family carers talking in terms which could readily be translated into the language of risk. When I looked for a quick fix on this topic in psychology and sociology texts, I found that it wasn’t even mentioned in the indexes at that time. The current generation of younger academics can draw upon a vast, even overblown, published literature and are generating more refined, second-generation theoretical analyses (Zinn 2008, Brown 2013).

3. One interesting paper concerned with the prevalence of narratives blaming women for HIV in India, a developing country marked by substantial gender inequality unfortunately didn’t quite make it into print. A promising paper about disease media representation in Russia, similarly, did not survive the review and revision process. These two losses perhaps reflect the greater barriers to publication in Western journals faced by researchers in developing countries.

4. At the time of writing, in November 2013, many researchers employed by UK universities will have recently participated in the just-completed Research Excellence Framework (REF) quinquennial research evaluation. The 2014 exercise required evidence of non-academic impact. Those who undertake critical research have learnt how difficult it is to demonstrate within this simple, arguably simplistic, framework that their work actually makes a difference.

5. In recent times, the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan and the 2013 Hurricane Haiyan in the Philippines with the highest ever recorded wind speed provide examples of mid-scale catastrophes that national and international systems can just about cope with. Others, equally serious, such as the spread of the Sahara receive much less media attention because they unfold more slowly.