8th Annual University of Birmingham Open International Health Lecture

Health and Society: Why Finland is so good and the UK is now so bad

With speaker Danny Dorling, Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography, University of Oxford 

Since 2014, life expectancy in the UK for both men and women has fallen. Nowhere else in Europe has seen such a shift. Every single country that ONS has published comparable data on has instead seen it rise. Since 2015, infant mortality in England and Wales has risen (significantly), each and every year. In contrast, in Scotland it is falling. However, the greatest contrast with the UK—especially with England—is Finland. In Finland, health simply continues to improve at a remarkable rate. What are we doing wrong, and what are they doing that has turned out to be so right? 

Biography

Danny Dorling joined the School of Geography and the Environment in September 2013 to take up the Halford Mackinder Professorship in Geography. He was previously a professor of Geography at the University of Sheffield. He has also worked in Newcastle, Bristol, Leeds and New Zealand, went to university in Newcastle upon Tyne, and to school in Oxford. 

Much of Danny's work is available open access (see www.dannydorling.org). With a group of colleagues he helped create the website www.worldmapper.org which shows who has most and least in the world. His work concerns issues of housing, health, employment, education, wealth and poverty. His recent books include, co-authored texts The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the way we live and Bankrupt Britain: An atlas of social change.

Before a career in academia Danny was employed as a play-worker in children's play-schemes and in pre-school education where the underlying rationale was that playing is learning for living. He tries not to forget this. 

He is an Academician of the Academy of the Learned Societies in the Social Sciences, a former Honorary President of the Society of Cartographers and a current patron of Roadpeace, the national charity for road crash victims.

This event is free to attend although registration is required. Refreshments will be provided.