Student Conference Presentations

I begin the piece with sound of a person breathing deeply and later the sounds present on an ICU ward. This signifies the difference of care one can get, where one must survive with no access to medical services and the other receives specialised, clinical care. But runs between both is the sound of heartbeat and ECG machine reading a patient’s cardiac electrical activity showing that we are all human and so should be treated the same. But not all get the same treatment. To show this, I add further sounds replicating inequality, confusion and difference.

In the second half of the piece, I play different styles of music on the guitar: blues, rock ‘n’ roll and East Asian music. I use the pentatonic scale in the same key of F# for all three of them. But the change in style and octaves signify the different, unique cultures present in the world. For blues I have pitch bends and slides, for rock ‘n’ roll I strum power chords and for East Asian music I use a repeating sequence of notes. I end with bar chords using all six strings of the guitar to show that to overcome our differences we must come together. This has highlighted the three founding principles of the NHS: meet the needs of everyone, is free at the point of delivery and is based on clinical need, not on ability to pay (NHS, 2023). Hence, why I also play three styles of music to highlight the three core principles of the NHS.

Health inequalities have existed across the world for years. But now more than ever it is becoming increasingly worse. A girl born today can expect to live for more than eighty years if she is born in some countries (Gama e Colombo, 2010). At the same time, she can live less than fourty-five years if born in others (Gama e Colombo, 2010). Sir Douglas Black (1980) suggests that a vicious cycle of low income, unemployment, poor environment and sub-standard housing leads to inequalities in access to health services. These inequities in health, avoidable health inequalities, arise because of the circumstances in which people grow, live, work, and age, and the systems put in place to deal with illness. Professor Sir Michael Marmot (2010) provides six policy objectives:

1. Give every child the best start in life

2. Enable all children, young people and adults to maximise their capabilities and have control over their lives

3. Create fair employment and good work for all

4. Ensure healthy standard of living for all

5. Create and develop healthy and sustainable places and communities

6. Strengthen the role and impact of ill-health prevention

It is essential that governments, civil society, and other global organizations now come together and follow these objectives in taking action to improve the lives of the world’s citizens (Gama e Colombo, 2010). Importantly the NHS needs to achieve health equity, it is the right thing to do, and now is the right time to do it.

References:

Black, D., Whitehead, M., Townsend, P. and Davidson, N. (1980). Inequalities in health : The Black Report. London: Penguin.

‌Gama e Colombo, D. (2010). Closing the gap in a generation: health equity through action on the social determinants of health. Final report of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health. Revista de Direito Sanitário, 10(3), p.253. doi:https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2316-9044.v10i3p253-266.

‌GOV.UK. (n.d.). The NHS Constitution for England. [online] Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-nhs-constitution-for-england/the-nhs-constitution-for-england#:~:text=The%20NHS%20is%20founded%20on.

Marmot, M., Allen, J., Goldblatt, P., Boyce, T., McNeish, D., Grady, M. and Geddes, I. (2010). Fair society, healthy lives : the Marmot Review : strategic review of health inequalities in England post-2010.‌