Category: Guest Blog

by Laura Boothman, Policy Manager at Arthritis Research UK

Planning is indispensable in many areas of life – we use it to manage projects, finances and time. Identifying goals, setting actions and discussing and sharing them with others can make us more likely to stick to our plans and achieve the outcomes we want. When it comes to planning to support our health, however, there is room for improvement; according to the latest survey data only 3% of general practice patients currently say they have a written plan.…

Read more of this article

by Dr Adam Al-Kashi, Head of Research & Education, BackCare

In his 1985 paper – Sick Individuals and Sick Populations (1) – epidemiologist, Professor Geoffrey Rose rendered a crucial insight, “The more widespread a particular cause, the less it explains the distribution of cases. The hardest cause to identify is the one that is universally present”. Despite decades of evidence, policy and best intention, a musculoskeletal health crisis has emerged and escalated to the point of now warranting its very own world summit.…

Read more of this article

by Jann Landles, Hon Secretary, Vasculitis UK

In the European Union, a disease is defined as rare when it affects less than 1 in 2000 people. The European Commission defines rare diseases as ‘life-threatening or chronically debilitating diseases which are of such low prevalence that special combined efforts are needed to address them’. With 15 systemic vasculitis disease phenotypes and several subsets, some of these diseases being very rare but not all of them life threating, you can begin to image the issues facing Vasculitis UK.…

Read more of this article

by Chloe Kastoryano, Project Coordinator, Scleroderma Society

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) – a condition very few of us had heard of until recently – is suddenly widely known throughout the world. The ice bucket craze that started in America has swept across the pond and now in the UK we’re doing the same. The globe has united behind the #icebucketchallenge, and different countries have put their stamp on the stunt with their own variants – Gaza, for example, is doing the #RubbleBucketChallenge. …

Read more of this article

by Chris Maker, Director of LUPUS UK One of the biggest problems for people who have lupus is obtaining a diagnosis. During 2009 LUPUS UK posted a survey questionnaire to all 5,700 members asking them to provide information about how lupus impacts on their lives. The response was overwhelming with over 3,000 completed questionnaires being returned. The summary of findings was:

• It was taking, on average, more than 7 years to diagnose lupus from the first symptom experienced – this had not improved over a 20 year period.

…

Read more of this article

by Sue Browning, Deputy CEO, Chartered Society of Physiotherapy

The scale of the challenge presented by how we are going to pay for care in the future is daunting. Adults with long-term and multiple conditions and disabilities are living longer, but according to the recent National Audit Office report¹, the older adults social care budget has experienced the greatest reduction over recent years – 12% in real terms. Given that the age group of adults aged 85+, the group most likely to need care, is rising faster than the population as a whole, we know that something has to change.…

Read more of this article

by Nick Pahl, CEO of the British Acupuncture Council

2014 is the centenary of the start of the First World War. Certainly I don’t want to suffer what happened to Asquith the then Prime Minister. Allegedly, he used to spend Cabinet meetings translating dispatches from the front into Latin verse, believing there was little else he could do with them … my lesson from this is that we need to ensure we respond to concerns, particularly from patients and the public.…

Read more of this article

By Ailsa Bosworth, CEO of the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society

In November 2011 the then Minister for Long Term Conditions, Paul Burstow MP, commissioned health officials to conduct a scoping exercise into early diagnosis across the health service to understand the extent of delayed diagnosis and its impact on patients. At around the same time the Coalition Government launched a national dementia awareness campaign to encourage people to spot the early signs of the disease and earmarked £10 million for dementia memory services to improve early diagnosis and treatment of the condition.…

Read more of this article