Academia, England-style

Random Photo that Danny thought was funny:

Oxford may only be the 6th best university in the world (thanks, Stephen, for posting the link), but it's still an amazing place for a weekend trip and conference! Thanks to my cushy connections at the LSHTM, I got to attend a Health Policy conference earlier this week, held at Madgalen College in Oxford. The conference was Monday and Tuesday, but Danny and I headed out on Sunday morning to see just how Oxford compared to Cambridge (which, incidentally, just leaped over Harvard for best university in the world). Although the hands-down verdict is that Cambridge is better (I mean, who punts from inside the boat?!), we had a great time. Highlights of the visit included:

- Visiting Christ Church (which is a college, not a church, although it does have quite a large church), where some scenes from Harry Potter 1 and 2 were filmed, and where Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was inspired to write Alice in Wonderland. Alice was the young daughter of the dean of the college. Every night after dinner the dean would leave via a hidden door and back staircase - the white rabbit was based on him. Alice also had a cat named Dinah who would sit in a tree next to the library.

- Listening to bees. Just so you're assured that Oxford does have a hippy-dippy side, we visited a socio-ecological project where a guy has set up 2 bee hives, with a stethescope in each one so you can sit and listen to the bees doing their thing. It was pretty cool.

- Cream tea

- Dinner at one of Jamie Oliver's Italian restaurants. Tired of going to pubs and finding just one veggie option, we splurged for some home-made Italian goodness. And it was good.

- The Ashmolean museum: art and old things.

- The Museum of the History of Science. Lots of beautiful, hand-made astronomical tools that I don't understand, the original 1940 journal describing the use of penicillin (not that long ago!), several of Marconi's first radios, and a chilling display of the first anesthesia delivery system from the 1840's next to a bone-saw kit from the late 1700's. Ouch.


But it wasn't all fun and games and tea (although we did buy a new game, and we did drink a lot of tea). We were also there to learn. While Danny went to the Bodleian library to read the records of the conservative party, I began in earnest my foray into the social sciences. It was really great to think about the more large-scale aspects of health, rather than just how we treat diseases. Topics ranged from the fairly straightforward (do policies to include patients in safety efforts work, and what determines whether patients want to get involved) to the obscure-but-thought-provoking (focusing on social governance and the fate of all humanity rather than politial and economic gains).

The keynote address happened to be by Ted Marmor, on the recent health care reform in the US, and how we managed to get a "Republican style" plan that no republicans voted for (answer? US senate structure. and some other stuff). But he is hopeful that some of the new laws regarding private insurance may pave the way towards more universal, if not single payer, health care.

Another point that was driven home in this conference is that in the UK, health care policy changes all the time. Yes, the NHS has been in place since 1948, but they (politicians) feel the need to make some slight change every 2-3 years - changing the details GP contracts, changing public health priorities, changing the flow of money. All of which of course means that there's very little time to evaluate policies, and everyone does so under the assumption that they will just change in a few years away. And doctors have just gotten used to the idea that while the policies change constantly, once the dust settles they will go back to practicing medicine as usual. Whether that will be the case with the new White Paper, though, is anyone's guess. But more on that later. For now, it's off to Salzburg!