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Xand Vand Van Tulleken

Hello and welcome to season 4 of public health disrupted with me Xand van Tulleken… …

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Rochelle Burgess

and me Rochelle Burgess. Xand is a doctor, writer & TV presenter, and I’m a community health psychologist and Associate Professor at the ×î×¼µÄÁùºÏ²ÊÂÛ̳ Institute for Global Health.Ìý It’s so good to be back! Xand can you believe we are on season 4?Ìý We’ve got some amazing topics lined up for you and as always and some really exciting guests to add a heap of insight to these discussions. Xand, shall we remind our listeners what public health disrupted is all about?...Ìý

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Xand Vand Van Tulleken

This podcast is about public health, but more importantly, it’s about the systems that need disrupting to make public health better. Join us each month as we challenge the status quo of the public health field, asking what needs to change, why and how to get there.

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Rochelle Burgess

In today’s episode, we’re going to be taking a deep dive into the world of vaccinations. What are vaccination rates looking like right now? Our guests will be helping us understand why vaccination rates in the UK might be falling, and what are the innovative ways in which we can tackle this going forward. We’ll be unpacking the concept of herd immunity, and examining the perception of vaccinations as a social norm. We’ll also touch on whether there are any outbreaks on the horizon that we should be aware of. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover here today. Xand shall we introduce today’s guests?

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Xand Vand Van Tulleken

Our first guest today is Dr Ranj Singh. Ranj is a TV presenter and NHS clinician, specialising in the wellbeing of young people and a friend and dear colleague of mine from tele land. He is a resident doctor on BBC1's Morning Live, co-presenter of ITV's prime-time series Save Money: Good Health, Save Money: Lose Weight and Dr. Ranj: On Call as well as co-creating host of BAFTA award-winning CBeebies series, Get Well Soon and that show is phenomenol. He was also a regular medical expert on This Morning. As well as these flagship shows, Ranj is a regular contributor to programmes as wide-ranging as The One Show, Inside Out and Watchdog; ITV's Good Morning Britain, Tonight and Channel 5 News. In 2018 Ranj swapped his scrubs for sequins as a Strictly Come Dancing contestant. He is a Sunday Times best-selling author having written three hugely successful books: How To Be A Boy And Do It Your Own Way, How To Grow Up (and Feel Amazing) and The No-Worries Guide For Boys, as well as two children's school books. He has also released three of his own very successful picture books: A Superhero Like You, A Superpower Like Mine and A Superfamily Like Ours. Xand that is a love letter to Ranj I that was so effusive it was so lovely. I don't know I mean, how am I going to match that with my We feel equally effusive about our second guessed we are so excited

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Helen BedfordÌý

Thank you for having us

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Rochelle Burgess

if this was in person, Helen, I do that this little weird thing that I do where I sort of like do a curtsy as if I'm curtsying to the queen. That is how amazing I think Helen's work is so I'll start with like my imaginary curtsy thing as far as how I will frame my introduction to Helen who is in the same building as me at ×î×¼µÄÁùºÏ²ÊÂÛ̳ and the Institute for Child Health but yet we've I don't know if we've actually met in person so don't be surprised Helen I use this this podcast to start finding cool women profs that I have knocking on their door all over campus. Helen Bedford is professor of children's health at the ×î×¼µÄÁùºÏ²ÊÂÛ̳ Institute of Child Health. Her research focuses on child public health issues and in particular childhood vaccination. This includes the determinants of vaccine uptake, including vaccine hesitancy. Her research has included parents, health professionals and young people's attitudes and knowledge towards established and new potential vaccines, as well as new uses for established vaccines such as in pregnant women. This research has informed national and local policy and practice, she advises a wide range of researchers, organisations and groups on vaccine related health issues, and is an expert spokesperson of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. So a huge welcome to you both. Thank you so much for being here. It's lovely to see you, Helen, I do want to start with you. Because we're in a situation in the UK at the moment that I suppose I thought I would never see in my career, but it feels like vaccines are the one thing where I think I'd have to worry about that someone else has worked it all out. It rolls out across the population. And yet now we're seeing vaccination rates falling. So can you talk a bit about what the current situation is? And why it's so concerning?

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Helen BedfordÌý

Yeah, thanks. Actually, I'd like to wind back a bit. And first of all, just talk about how incredible vaccination is. So if we think about in the 1960s, globally, before we had any measles vaccine, you know, millions and millions of children would die of measles. And vaccination is often described as after clean water being the most effective public health intervention we have. So let's just set that scene. It's incredible. And what has happened over the last 40 years with vaccination globally, in protecting children's health and saving lives is immeasurable. But we do have a situation in the UK at the moment where for about the last 10 years, every year, there's been a little tiny decline in uptake. And I'm talking about childhood vaccination, mainly here. And I'm talking about the vaccines that babies get in the first year of life. So it's a six in one vaccine, and MMR vaccine that they get about the age of about 12 months, little tiny decline each year, which amounts to about 3% over that 10 years. So not massive, but worrying. And why is that happened? Well, like everything, lots of different reasons. But we know, back in 2012, there was a huge reorganisation of the NHS, which affected immunisation services, which previously were ticking along really nicely. But it changed the organisation of them and it made different organisations have different responsibilities. And it fragmented how things were working, that that had a major impact that we're only really just recovering from now. And then of course, there's all the other stuff that we hear about on a daily basis pressure on general practice, you know, reduction in GPS reduction in practice nurses, and of course, parents have to take their children to be vaccinated. And if you're have to take time off work, and you may not get paid for that time off work, all these things can compound the difficulty for parents of actually accessing vaccine services.

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Rochelle Burgess

That's so interesting. And I'm really glad to hear you sort of mentioned the wider socio structural reasons behind why why some of these falls might be happening Ranj, I wonder if you wanted to drop in there. Do you have any thoughts about this, you know, like, where we might start to think about how we address some of these factors and are things like mandatory vaccinations an option, I feel like that's a dangerous word these days to be like to say something is mandatory automatically kicks in this rejection, social mechanism. But I mean, in Canada, where I'm from, a lot of them are mandatory in childhood, like you couldn't go to school without them. And that was just the way it was.

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Ranj SinghÌý

In the UK, we do not like being told what to do. It's a cultural thing. And that probably applies to other places as well. So I'm by no means an expert in this area. I am bowing to Helens expertise here. I've been to numerous lectures by Helen on this as well. And I credit you with my training in this area. Why are they dropping? You? Helen has gone through the multitude of reasons. And that's not even the whole picture. I think it's interesting. It's not through lack of information, because I think we have more information at our fingertips than we ever have done before. The problem is, that information isn't really quality controlled, necessarily. So people can access everything that they want to know. But the difficulty is that what they are being told isn't necessarily I think quality controlled or always reliable. And that's been the difficulty. We have had a proliferation of information and misinformation all at the same time. It actually misinformation spreads a lot faster, particularly online than accurate stuff. And I think vaccination is one of the things that has fallen prey to that, we've certainly seen that during and since the COVID pandemic, I think that really exemplified how quickly information and bad information can get out there. And that's had ripple effect, I think on other vaccines, the whole that, you know, the certain groups did have to have mandatory COVID vaccinations. And I think we learned a bit of a lesson that that doesn't always work.Ìý We were in a global pandemic, it's a very unique situation, we're not talking about when we don't have that necessarily on a day to day basis with other illnesses. But yeah, there are there are lots of reasons why the rates have dropped. And how I don't think mandatory vaccine vaccinations is going to be the solution. But obviously, something needs to be done. And just like there are lots of reasons why it's happening, there are lots of reasons how to tackle it, lots of ways to tackle it.Ìý My, my feeling about vaccination, and the way I suppose society is going is that this isn't a top down solution. I don't think that's working. I think we, we have accurate sources of information out there we are, we are at the mercy of services and resources. And, you know, there's only so much we can do there. But I almost feel like it needs to go. This needs to be dealt with from the bottom up from grassroots up. So let's talk to specifically to vaccine hesitant communities and find out why, what's the what's the reason often have often there are historical reasons. And often the way they're getting information presented to them doesn't, doesn't feel like it applies to them, particularly, for example, from ethnic minority communities, I know that there is a level of sometimes distrust in medical information because of historical and other reasons. But also people don't necessarily understand it in the way that they need to or it's not put across to them or by the people that they listen to. So let's find out who these communities are listening to let's go with them. I think there are certain communities that we can learn from. For example, let's look at monkey pox vaccination, the LGBTQ plus community, you know that uptake was fantastic, people queued and queued and queuedÌý . And that's because this isn't our first pandemic. We know what it's like. So let's take success stories and see if we can pick things out from them. I have a thing about this whole, you know, some people think maybe we should reward GPS more for meeting their targets and things like that, that I completely agree people need to be paid for the work that they do. The problem is the public perception of that is very different. And this is one of the biggest issues we've got is in the age of social media, there are lots of views that go around online, and we don't challenge them quickly enough. We don't offer the counter narrative quickly enough. And that happened during COVID. It was frustrating to see the amount of disinformation and misinformation going around, be it well meaning meaning or or deliberately malicious. And the authorities that should have been counteracting that did not get there quick enough, did not respond fast enough. And I think that's the challenge we have to now meet. It's not about providing people with information, there's loads of it out there. What we now have to do is try to balance some of the misinformation out there. And I think that's something that isn't going to be easy to do. But I feel like we need to start doing more of it.

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Helen BedfordÌý

Just to echo 100% what Ranj has said it's about listening to communities to people and responding appropriately. I don't think we do enough of that listening. I think we have learned things from the COVID pandemic, but I don't think they necessarily apply directly to childhood vaccination, which is a different thing completely. And but I do also think that we're we are bad at responding quickly. So you know, a lot of where people get information from, say from social media, I don't think there's good evidence to suggest that if you're going to vaccinate your children, you read something on social media, it turns you into a non vaccinator. But I do think for people who have concerns, they're often called hesitant. I don't actually like that term. With respect to vaccination. I think it's a poor term, but people who have concerns and questions and they go to social media, then obviously, you know, it obviously backs up their their concerns, and we don't want a vacuum and I think that's what we often have and we need to be filling that vacuum with good information. There isn't enough of that there isn't enough pro vaccine advocacy from all sorts of people not just from health professionals but for and all sorts of people could be doing a much, you know, much better job at filling those gaps that are there.

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Xand Van TullekenÌý

Can I just ask about that use because the term I've always used this vaccine hesitant to distinguish from the sort of quite extreme fringe of, I guess the people we'd call anti vaxxers. And those, there's, there's a different, you know, there are multiple reasons why people might hold any of these views. But it feels like there is an extreme group of people who are quite vehemently opposed to any vaccinations and would say, look like they have some quite controversial or incorrect ideas about microchips or conspiracies and things like this. And there's a lot of people who go, Look, I'm just not everything from going look, I'm actually just a bit worried about the side effects like I'm busy, even for me getting my vaccines this winter, I'm busy. I don't want to feel ill after them. So how do you beyond different communities? There's a whole there's a whole spectrum of different reasons why people might drag their heels, how should we label them? And maybe labels the wrong word.What is the correct term?

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Helen BedfordÌý

Well, I don't know what the correct term is. But but but to me hesitant is a bit negative. I don't know. I think if we're thinking about anti vaccine, so there are anti vaccine activists, activists who a tiny, tiny, tiny proportion of this spectrum of vaccine acceptance if you like, but they're often really noisy, so tiny in number, but very, very noisy. And then right at the other end, we've got people who just go along and get their children vaccinated with out, you know, without aren't asking any questions. I think the benefit of the COVID pandemic and the COVID vaccination is that people are asking more questions. And of course, you should ask questions. You know, if you go and have any other medical intervention, you would ask questions, but somehow people who ask questions about vaccination have been labelled as being, you know, maybe a little bit anti Vax. And I think that's wrong, wrong wrong. And we shouldn't be using that terminology. For people who are just asking questions.

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Rochelle Burgess

So vaccine cautious might be a more might be a better way of putting it that they are they have an appropriate level of caution.Ìý

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Ranj SinghÌý

I have to agree with Helen, in the sense that I, I feel like it is normal to ask questions about vaccines, absolutely, we should do. Because although vaccines are a wonderful health intervention, they are not without their issues. So we've got to be open and honest about this. And it is we should be encouraging people to ask questions. The problem is you're right. They get lumped in this anti vaccine sort of camp, like how dare you ask anything about it, you know, you must obviously be anti them, but that's never the case. It's interesting when I work in real life with real patients, I don't encounter very much anti vaccine sentiment. I do encounter a lot of people who are worried who are cautious because they are hearing so many different things and they Just want some information to help. But when I go on social media, for instance, where a lot of us are now where a lot of us are getting our information, if I was that vaccine cautious person, I am seeing very loud anti vaccine voices, not the vaccine cautious. They don't go online and say I'm worried I'm or want a bit more information. They go online to listen and read. And then you have the, you know, the small but very, very vocal, anti vaccine minority who are extremely loud. And when you hear that it's a vaccine cautious person, it sways your opinion. And it sways your views. And it makes you even more anxious about them. And it may completely change your attitude towards them. So that's why I'm so adamant that we need to be in that space counteracting that information with the right people in the right way we've got to be doing that. I don't think that's going to be an easy thing to do. I think social media companies need to take a hell of a lot more responsibility for these sorts of things, because they're not taking any at the moment. Any other platform. For instance, on TV, if you have that they would have regulation, they would have someone saying Hang on a second. You can't just put stuff on there willy nilly. And social media platforms have got away with that. But yeah, I've gone off on my tangent now, which is what I normally do a little rant.

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Xand Van TullekenÌý

No, but I think it's so important. How do you move healthcare professionals who are talking on the telly who want to do responsible messaging, who believe in vaccines are doing that? What's the balance between scare mongering dogma? They're kind of right frustration that lower vaccination rates will severely harm a lot of people. What what is the kind of way of approaching it?

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Helen BedfordÌý

That's the million dollar question, isn't it? I mean, it's really difficult. I think it's just about acknowledging that most vaccines have a very good safety profile, but they're not without, you know, some adverse events. But yeah, and you have to balance that against the diseases. The problem is, when half the equation has gone and the diseases have gone, because of the vaccines. It's a sort of unequal, you know, it's no longer a balance, isn't it? You know, if you're saying, measles is such a terrible disease, and it is a terrible disease, but we see so little of it now, although, hopefully we can get on on to the possibility of outbreaks a bit later on. So all sorts of risk is focused on the vaccine, and less so on the disease. And how do you help parents understand a disease that they've never seen them and have heard of, you know, it says in the history books, as far as they're concerned, I think personal stories are really important here. I mean, I don't know if you were following the in the recommendation that we should start using chickenpox vaccine, which came in last week. So this will be added to the childhood schedule. And there was some really sort of emotional stories from parents of their children who had suffered, you know, severe complications of chickenpox. And that's not a common complication, but nevertheless, devastating. And we need to be doing more of that, I think, sharing those sorts of stories.

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Ranj SinghÌý

I totally agree, I think personal testimony is, is extremely powerful. Because it's so relatable for people at home, to think that could be me, that could be my child, that could be my loved one. And I think we don't do enough of that. We do this a lot of this sort of top down talking at people and say you should do this, or we should do that. Because we're the experts. Our job is to tell you what to do. And actually, sometimes it's not sometimes it's better for people on the ground to be discussing this amongst themselves. And I think showing for instance, there's there's a balance here and I think Xand was alluding to that as well. Is we forgotten what these diseases do? We forgotten what tetanus does. Tetanus is horrific. But in this country, nobody knows what tetanus does to kids, you go to certain parts of the world, you will see it. Maybe we should start showing people like we do on cigarette packets. I know that's a bit of an extreme, but maybe it's time we started showing people what actually happens when we don't have high enough rates of vaccination. The reemergence of these horrible conditions, people that have gone through this like I have yet to meet a parent or carer who has had a severe vaccine preventable illness, who turns around and says, I'm glad I didn't get the vaccination or when, when my child was due, in fact, it's usually the other way around. It's like I wish I had, because I now see the reality of what it's like when you don't. But it's got to be done sensitively. There's got to be done with balance, isn't it? Because scare mongering? If you want to call it that, or you know, reality check is what I call it can I guess have the opposite effect as well?

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Helen BedfordÌý

It can backfire. The message has to be just right. It's, you know, like the porridge in the, in the, in the fair story. Can't be too hot. Can't be too cold just got to be just right. And we need psychologists like Rochelle to help us get it right, get that message at the right level. I think we are doing more of that work with talking to parents talking to communities, talking to young people about, you know, the messages, and what their understanding is, I think more of that is happening now. And certainly influencing the material that's available about immunisation, but that, you know, there's a lot to do. I mean, if you think about the UK, we're such a diverse population, there's so many different cultures that we need to make sure you know, are included in that messaging. There's a lot to be done.

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Xand Van TullekenÌý

Can I come back to your example? Ranj of monkeypox because it really struck me I mean, one of the things I've really loved about all the different campaigning and health messaging you've done over the years is your personal involvement with issues whether it was around prep, or you talking about monkeypox, just then that you're leading by example. The other thing I was going to ask about that the monkey pox, my understanding was, there was a bit of friction there where you had to bring some ID that people were saying they were asking for ID and they wanted this vaccine and actually, anyone showing up to get their monkey pox vaccine should just been given one. And instead they were sort of going no, no, we need some paperwork, it was a bit of a headache, and people are getting turned away. And I just wonder about those barriers as well. Do we need to make the system a bit more slick for people?

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Ranj SinghÌý

From my perspective? Yes. I mean, there was an issue with monkey pox around supply and things as well wasn't there and set up for vaccination. And definitely it was tricky sometimes to get access for a lot of people. I mean, you had to have time to queue it away and get it done, which it should not have been the case but there's a lot that can be learned, I think from the LGBTQ plus community and the success of HIV campaigns and prep campaigns and vaccination campaigns and how it's been done. And it's often done by people from the community. That's I think it's a lot of people see themselves and think, yes, I believe this person. You're absolutely right. There was a lot of information that came from Central Government about monkey pox, which I thought was useless. There was a lot of stuff that was poo pooed, because it felt so sterile, and it felt soulless, and it didn't feel like it applied. But then I do. For example, I'm not blowing my own trumpet. But I did an article for attitude magazine, which blew up, which was free didn't cost the NHS a single penny, I didn't get paid for it. But it was a big intervention. So there's something to learn from that. Are we putting our messages on the right platforms for the right people? And are we using the right people to do it? But you're right, the whole system in terms of access probably does need to be a bit slicker. Maybe we do need. And this is part and parcel, I guess, of making it the societal norm is, if people are able to just walk in and they happen to have missed the vaccine, and they can just get it, then that would be great. That would potentially take away a bit of that one of those barriers, potentially. But I don't know, I don't know much about the research behind this, Helen.Ìý

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Helen BedfordÌý

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I would certainly argue that poor access is one of the major reasons for under immunisation, and that an awful lot could be done to improve that just by providing vaccines in places that families go to now I came out of my office the other day, and what was sitting in front of me, but a mobile vaccination centre right opposite me and those kinds of initiatives. So there was a very famous one in Hackney about 10 years ago, there was a measles outbreak. And they got a bus, they painted it with spots, called a spotty bus, very original. And it drove round Hackney parking and supermarket car parks, play, you know, school playgrounds, and they vaccinated about 1000 children. I mean, really successful. So it's and also we've seen a lot actually around COVID vaccination, where vaccination was taken to the community, and trusted community leaders were involved and the impact that that has, so we need to be much cleverer about employing those sorts of interventions. I think we're a bit you know, boxy, it's got to be at the GP and etc, etc. I mean, we saw practice nurses working in GPS surgeries, when parents were literally frightened to take their children to be vaccinated setting up drive through vaccination, you know, so you drove in with your baby got baby got vaccinated through the window, we just need to think outside the box a bit more. School programmes are brilliant. I mean, we have had a knock with as a result of COVID with the HPV vaccination programme in school, because obviously, young people weren't attending school. But that's an incredible achievement. You know, we've got where we have one of the highest uptakes in the world, because it's a school based programme got a nice captive population better peer group pressure works brilliantly.

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Rochelle BurgessÌý

Helen I just want to think about that term pressure a bit here, because I know that we sort of alluded to outbreaks on the horizon. And I just want I mean, I think that that is also a different kind of pressure, but like, sort of this way that forces us to think differently, is there something you know that we should be worried about thinking about?

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Helen BedfordÌý

Well measals is always a worry. And the reason it's a worry is because it's incredibly infectious, the most infectious disease there is. So it doesn't take much of a decline in vaccine uptake to for you to start seeing outbreaks again. And we're in a situation now where we have had really suboptimal measles vaccine uptake for many years, partly as a result of the discredited paper Lancet paper, which was, you know, 25 years ago, but the ramifications are still around a little bit. Some parents are still scared of MMR vaccine. These things persist for a long time. So what we've had is over the year, we've got a combination of a buildup of people that weren't vaccinated when they were very young and now are in their 20s Plus lower than we would like uptake because really, you need 95% uptake of two doses of MMR to keep this keep this disease at bay. And we've had this buildup of susceptibles over those years. And the United Kingdom health security agency did some modelling. And they predicted that particularly in London, where vaccine uptake is lower, much lower than the rest of the country. There is the potential for an outbreak of measles between 40,000 and 160,000 cases. Now that's a really worrying prospect because that those numbers of cases you're going to see so many hospitalizations, so many sick children's so many complications and deaths. You know, this is the reality At that, unless we can turn this around, and we can, because we've got the vaccine, you know, we're at, we're in for a problem there.

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Xand Van TullekenÌý

The sense I get from both of you really is actually surprisingly optimistic. And actually, there are just simple, practical, almost logistical technical issues that would go some way towards pushing those numbers back up again. So I'm left feeling quite optimistic compared to where I was at the beginning. I don't know how you're feeling Rochelle, are you more optimistic than me generally or not? I'm never quite sure.

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Rochelle BurgessÌý

It's hard to tell. I think it depends on the topic. six year old who is vaccinated to the nines, I gave him chickenpox vaccine, even before it was suggested. I'm very proud of that. I talked to lots of people about it, but I'm also a public health person.

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Xand Van TullekenÌý

that's very, it feels like it's very important to tell people about it.

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Rochelle BurgessÌý

I think that is it. You know, like those conversations that I have, I think are the most important like as Ranj and Helen been saying, there's the microcosms of how people make decisions happen through communication and, and communication with people that you know, and that and that you trust, I do feel positive. And I sometimes ask this question to my son, if like, if you had a magic wand, like what would be like the three things you would do to sort of fix this, this problem?

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Ranj SinghÌý

Am I allowed to say change the government?

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Rochelle BurgessÌý

It's not that powerful of a wand.

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Ranj SinghÌý

One thing, I think we need a specific centrally led social media anti misinformation squad. I think I think we need that social media is a huge and growing platform. If we don't address that now, it's only going to become harder. It's like television, think of it like television. If you had, let's say, 20 years ago, people going on TV and actively putting out anti Vaccine Information. You'd be like, right, we need to deal with this. We need to Yeah, but we're not doing that with social media. And I think that needs to be done yesterday. And better regulation of social media in general, which the social media Bill was supposed to do. And I don't exactly know where we're going with that at the moment. Absolutely. I think logistics need to be sorted. When if we're going to make vaccination the societal norm, it needs to be everywhere. It needs to start young in schools so that kids are aware of it, and parents are aware of it and then it kind of trickles upwards and then the third thing what would the third thing be? If I can magically magic all up?

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Xand Van TullekenÌý

You're doing stuff. You're kind of being the genie Well, like you also go on the TV and do all this stuff. Your third thing can be keep doing you good work. That's all right. You're off the hook. I've seen you do it on the telly. Rochelle is just doing the thing of sitting in silence making you squirm and be like no, I asked her three things. Helen you'd better have three.

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Helen BedfordÌý

Okay, well, I'll be a copycat. And I think Ranj is dead, right. We've got to get this misinformation on social media sorted big time. We know what we need to do. We need to make sure that parents are able to have a conversation with a health professional who knows what they're talking about, that they get invites to go to get their children vaccinated that you know it's made more accessible so it's easier for them to get it. And we also need to be looking at our information systems and make sure that our data are good. But all this is going to take money and resources and what we need we can't wait to train doctors and nurses. We need ready trained people in there now in there today, doing these, you know, running vaccination clinics and offering vaccination in other places like in you know, when a child goes into hospital, can they get vaccinated not always it's a bit of a no brainer that

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Xand Van TullekenÌý

wow, that's That's fascinating. That's incredible

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Helen BedfordÌý

There's a lot we can do. There's a lot we can do.

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Xand Van TullekenÌý

That's a very positive note for you both to end on, can we ask you our final question? We always ask it every guest. We're interested in disruptive thinking. And I think both of you are permanently disruptive, you're trying to create change, you're trying to shift public opinion and public health in lots of very important ways. Very often, people have something that has sort of prompted them early in life or something they've returned to a piece of art or music or poetry, or a book or a song or anything that disrupted your thinking at some moments in your life. Ranj, I feel like you've got, let's just, let's just start with, let's start with you Ranj

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Ranj SinghÌý

Go on, let's put me on the spot first. I don't know if there's been one specific thing that has disrupted my thinking. But on the topic of art, there's an exhibition in London called frameless, which is basically a imagine for giant rooms where you go in and they project classic art pieces, everything from like impressionism through to abstract art through to modern art. And it's an immersive, visual, interactive and sound experience. I learned about art at school, I loved art, I that was one of the things I was actually good at. But I had never experienced art in this way. And it was a completely new way of experiencing art and opening up this art to people. Like I find Turner's paintings quite boring. I'm not gonna lie. I mean, they're quite dramatic. They're interesting, but to a five year old, they're like, What, but I saw kids, like little kids completely immersed in these classical art masters paintings in a way that I've never seen before. And I think maybe the way we experience art is evolving, and using technology. And these sorts of immersive environments, I think is opening it up. And I saw that art that I'd seen before countless times in a completely different way. And I was like, I get it, I get why this is so important. And I get why it has the impact that it has. Because I'll be quite open. I don't understand modern art. Sometimes I find it a bit weird, I find it a bit like it's just a bunch of shapes and colours. And it doesn't really mean anything. And that's coming from an art fan. But I went into this room and I experienced modern art in a completely different way. And I was like, that's changed my mind

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Xand Van TullekenÌý

Helen?

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Helen BedfordÌý

Well, this is a really difficult question. I've been thinking about this for days, honestly. And I was going to I was gonna mention an exhibition that I saw yesterday as well, we're real arty farty types, aren't we? At my advanced age, there's much, far too much dimension. But yesterday, I really love photography. And yesterday, went to this fantastic exhibition at the Hayward gallery. Tsujimoto. He's a photographer and architect. And he'd got lots of fascinating concepts there. But the thing that really, really, really struck home was the seascapes that he taken different seas and lakes around the world. They were almost like abstract art. They were so beautiful, so mesmerising. And his observation was, can someone today view a scene just as primitive man did, and probably the sea is the only thing that remains as it would have done? Way back

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Xand Van TullikenÌý

I love that. That's brilliant. Are you guys are brilliant. Thank you so much, both of you for all the thoughts and brilliance and effort that you've put in and I think anyone who's listening whether their parent, child health care professional broadcaster will have got something amazing out of it today.

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Helen BedfordÌý

Thanks. That was fun.

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Rochelle BurgessÌý

You've been listening to Public Health Disrupted. This episode was presented by me, Rochelle Burgess and Xand Van Tulleken, produced by ×î×¼µÄÁùºÏ²ÊÂÛ̳ Health of the Public, and edited by Annabelle Buckland at Decibelle Creative. Our thanks again to today’s guests, Ranj Singh and Helen Bedford.

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Xand Van Tulleken

If you’d like to hear more of these fascinating discussions from ×î×¼µÄÁùºÏ²ÊÂÛ̳ Health of the Public, make sure you’re subscribed to this podcast so you don’t miss future episodes! Come and discover more online and keep up with the school’s latest news, events and research – just Google ‘×î×¼µÄÁùºÏ²ÊÂÛ̳ Health of the Public’.ÌýÌý This podcast is brought to you by ×î×¼µÄÁùºÏ²ÊÂÛ̳ Minds - bringing together ×î×¼µÄÁùºÏ²ÊÂÛ̳ knowledge, insights, and expertise through events, digital content, and activities that are open to everyone.