Sir Keir Starmer joins UCL podcast on health and law

Sir Keir Starmer, the Leader of the Labour Party, talked about the links between health and law with Professor Dame Hazel Genn (UCL Laws) on UCL Health of the Public's "Public Health Disrupted" podcast. In the podcast, entitled "How is law good for your health?" and hosted by Dr Xand van Tulleken ( doctor, writer and TV presenter ) and Dr Rochelle Burgess (UCL Global Health), Sir Keir and Dame Hazel discussed how health affected crime, and, conversely, how the law shaped health in its broadest sense, by enabling the conditions that allowed it to flourish, such as decent housing. Dame Hazel recounted an experience from the UCL Centre for Access to Justice, a free legal services clinic she founded. In 2016 the UCL centre set up a partnership with a GP practice in Stratford to provide legal advice and support to low income and vulnerable patients in the practice. A mother whose baby had breathing problems and skin infections kept returning to the GP, she explained, until the GP, hearing about the damp and infested conditions she was living in, redirected her to the legal clinic team within the practice. They asked the local authority to review her housing, leading her to be rehoused. "Once you've got the law on the books, that isn't the end of the story," Dame Hazel said.