Nuclear Weapons Group September meeting
2024-09-16 18:00 - 19:30 (Europe/London)
Medact’s Nuclear Weapons Group represents the longest standing aspect of Medact’s work towards nuclear abolition, and to address war, armed violence and conflict as global threats to health.

We will meet to provide an update on our ongoing work, and discuss the current global political landscape as related to nuclear weapons and disarmament. Register below to receive the meeting link!

For more info or with questions, email Sarah: sarahlasoye@medact.org

Securitisation of Health group meeting: September
2024-09-18 18:00 - 19:30
What is the securitisation of health?

A number of policing and counter-extremism measures are embedded by the government into UK health services, which at times require health workers to work closely with the police and other security agencies.

These measures risk undermining therapeutic relationships, confidentiality and trust in practitioners – as well as drawing health services and workers into becoming an arm of policing and counter-terror agencies.

Through research and campaigns, Medact aims to shift understandings of ‘security’, from typically “hard” measures (border enforcement, a punitive criminal justice system, counter-terror measures) and advocate for collective and human security, health and wellbeing. Read more about our work on Securitisation here.

About the group

The Securitisation of Health group is for health workers interested in working on these issues through campaigning, lobbying and research. New members are welcome!

If you have any questions or concerns about attending, please email our Campaign Lead Sarah Lasoye at sarahlasoye@medact.org.

This event will be held online on Zoom.

AGM 2024 & Panel Discussion - Building solidarity movements and demanding health justice amid poly-crisis
2024-09-24 18:00 - 20:30
The AGM is our yearly opportunity to come together and explore the overall running of Medact and to bring together members old and new from the UK and beyond. In addition to essential governance matters, we’re excited this year to be hosting a panel discisson:

Panel

The panel discussion will be followed by our AGM, where you’ll hear about successes and reflections from the last year of work across the Medact movement, an update on our organisational finances, and have a chance to vote in Trustee elections.

Everyone is welcome to join the meeting, but you must be a member to vote. If you would like to get involved in running Medact, why not join as a member today?

Submitting motions

The deadline for motion submissions has passed.

Election of Trustees

The deadline for Trustee applications has passed.

Logistics

We are hosting this year’s AGM online via Zoom. Register to let us know you are coming below, and provide any access requirements you may have. We will share the agenda as soon as it is finalised.

Speaker bios

Chairs:

Anuj Kapilashrami is an interdisciplinary social scientist, academic activist, and Professor in Global Health Policy and Equity in the School of Health & Social Care, and chair of Medact’s Board. Her current work focuses on advancing an intersectional approach to examining health inequalities and structural determinants of health and well-being. She has long been involved in People’s Health Movement (PHM) in India and the UK, formerly as Chair of PHM Scotland where she led the first public hearing on social determination of mental health and the development of people’s health manifesto for Scotland.

Kamran Abbasi is a doctor, journalist, editor and broadcaster. Following five years in hospital medicine, working in various medical specialties such as psychiatry and cardiology, he moved into senior editorial roles at the British Medical Journal from 1997 to 2005. He returned to The BMJ in his role as executive editor for content, leading the journal’s strategic growth internationally, digitally, and in print. Kamran was made Editor in chief of the BMJ in December 2021.

Panelists:

Guppi Bola is a senior economic strategist, previous Interim-Director of Medact and formerly Chair of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants. In 2020 she explored themes of planetary dysregulation, illness and oppression, and their intersections with the economy for Common Wealth using her 15 years of experience in climate and public health organising. More recently, she has spent the past five years establishing Decolonising Economics, alongside her partner in crime Noni Makuyana.

Rhiannon Mihranian is doctor, organiser, and researcher focused on health justice as a tool for radical systems change. Her work focuses on environmental justice, anti-colonialism, and re-imagining health systems.

Martin Drewry is CEO of Health Poverty Action (HPA) – an international NGO part of the People’s Health Movement, and ally of Medact. HPA works in 15 countries, with 400 staff mostly from the marginalised communities they serve. A background in Peace Studies, Martin played key roles in several large coalition campaigns.

Dr. Inga Blum is a neurologist from Hamburg, Germany currently specializing in family medicine. She joined IPPNW as a medical student with an interest in global health and justice and got involved in ICAN at its founding at the IPPNW World Congress in Helsinki in 2006. In her view the abolition of nuclear weapons is not only an urgent necessity because of the acute danger nuclear weapons pose for global survival but likewise a great chance to shift international security policies from being based on the threat of mutual annihilation to a human security system based on cooperation. Having witnessed the constant failure of disarmament conferences as a member of IPPNW Delegations she initiated a study on attitudes towards nuclear weapons among political decision-makers at the University of Hamburg. She has conducted numerous workshops and delivered speeches with a special focus on motivating the next generation to get active for nuclear disarmament and is active in promoting the Ban Treaty in Germany. She served on the board of the German section of IPPNW from 2013 to 2021 and has started the annual IPPNW Summer Camp to protest against the stationing of NATO nuclear weapons in Büchel, Rhineland-Palatinate.

Economic Justice National Organising Group Meeting
2024-10-02 19:00 - 20:00, 2024-10-30 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom
The Medact Economic Justice & Health group meets regularly to discuss current and future campaigns, plan events, work on strategy and share knowledge. The group is open to all and welcomes new members.

The main focus of this meeting will be to discuss the strategy of our housing and health lobbying and advocacy campaign focusing on Royal Colleges. We will also provide updates on our work as part of the Homes for Us alliance.

If you have any questions please contact jordilopezbotey@medact.org!

Medact Leeds group meeting: October
2024-10-03 19:30 - 20:30
The Leeds group come together monthly for meetings on the 6th of the month. Meetings are online mostly and sometimes in person! Medact Leeds are organising locally for climate and health justice as part of the Health for a Green New Deal network, and also taking action to end the hostile environment, campaigning for Patients Not Passports. All are welcome. Please sign up to the mailing list to join the group.

Medact Bristol group meeting: October
2024-10-07 18:00 - 19:00
Medact Bristol is interested and engaged in local, national and international issues that affect public health. Since its creation, Medact Bristol has focused its efforts on campaigns on climate, environment and sustainability, divestment, and migrant access to healthcare. The group’s current focus is supporting Reclaim our Buses, a campaign in Bristol to bring buses back into public control. New members are welcome.

Medact Glasgow group meeting: October
2024-10-08 18:30 - 19:30
Medact Glasgow is a collective of healthcare workers, students and people from other related social disciplines. We organise around, learn about and share information on campaigns related to health justice.

Our current focus is on fighting fuel poverty. We are working alongside Fuel Poverty Action, who organise for affordable and sustainable energy and against the inadequate living conditions which are making people sick.

Our main meeting is in person (or you can join on Zoom) on the second Tuesday of each month – all are welcome! Please get in touch with us on glasgow@medact.org if you want to join our meetings or find out more, or subscribe to the mailing list:

Medact North East group meeting: October
2024-10-09 20:00 - 21:00
Medact North East are a collective of health workers and students based across the North East, from Northumberland to Newcastle to Middlesbrough!
Currently we are working on a climate justice campaign, supporting a grassroots group to win the fight against a large waste incinerator on Teesside, which would pollute the air of the local community as well as accelerating the climate crisis.
We are also exploring campaigns around migrant health justice issues through our new ‘Migrant Health’ group. This includes supporting No to Hassockfield which is fighting to shut down a women’s detention centre in County Durham.
The group meets monthly. Each meeting is facilitated by a different person and they welcome new members! The time is used to discuss current campaigns and anything else relevant. For more information or to join a meeting in-person, get in touch at northeast@medact.org. or subscribe below.

Securitisation of Health group meeting: October
2024-10-16 18:00 - 19:30

Nuclear Weapons Group meeting: October
2024-10-17 18:00 - 19:30

London Housing & Health meeting: October
2024-10-17 18:45 - 20:30 | Pelican House, 144 Cambridge Heath Road, London, London, E1 5QJ, United Kingdom
Medact’s Housing & Health Group is organising to improve policies for better access to secure and sustainable housing.

This includes working alongside local groups to support local campaigns, as well as demanding policy change on a national level for better support for social housing, community-owned housing stock and protections for renters.

In this meeting, you will be hearing from the members involved in our work, get updates on our local organising, and help us develop the next steps and identify potential campaigns in other boroughs.

You don’t have to be a regular member of the Economic Justice &Health group or a health worker to get involved – everyone is welcome.

Sign up to the Medact London email list to hear about all Housing & Health London Meetings! If you’re unable to attend meetings but keen to get involved or develop a local campaign, you can contact Jordi: jordilopezbotey@medact.org.

Register to attend!

Making the Case for Social Homes: Messaging workshop with NEON
2024-10-21 18:30 - 20:00 | Zoom
Join us for an online messaging workshop in collaboration with NEON! Learn how to communicate the public health case for social homes to a wider audience, for use in broadcast media and campaigning.

Homes should be a place of comfort, health and security. Instead, across the UK, homes have become sites of illness. They are rendered cold and damp by poor insulation and sky-high energy prices. They are insecure due to unaffordable rents, evictions, and poor-quality housing.

We need to rethink housing beyond commodification and take action to reclaim housing for our health and as a public health asset.

With a new government in place, new opportunities will emerge to cut through the political and media narrative on homes and communicate our vision of the public health case for social homes.

This workshop is for health workers and campaigners who want to use health framing in their campaigns.

Join us for a workshop on how campaigners can effectively advocate for social homes!

We will cover:

Messaging guidance on how to use health framing to draw the links between the housing system and our physical and mental health

How to use case studies from your experience as health workers

Solutions that lead to a better health and housing for everyone

Get the messaging guide here!

Medact Bristol group meeting: November
2024-11-04 18:00 - 19:00

No Palantir in the NHS! Campaign Launch
2024-11-06 19:00 - 20:30 | Zoom
NHS England has given a £330 million contract to handle unprecedented amounts of health data to an American spy-tech firm currently supplying the Israeli military with advanced AI weaponry. As health workers, patients, and communities we are coming together across the country to stop the rollout of their technology in the NHS.

NEW: Check out the No Palantir in the NHS! Campaign Toolkit

As health workers and patients in Gaza are tortured, bombed, kidnapped and killed, we cannot allow NHS England to hand over our public money and data to a company complicit in the murder of our colleagues in Palestine. As patients, we cannot allow our data to be handed over to a company known for its involvement in state surveillance and human rights abuses. As communities, we know that privatisation and outsourcing will only further the NHS crisis.

Join us on 6th November to learn more about what the contract is, why it’s dangerous, Palantir’s involvement with human rights abuses and military occupation across the world. Come and find out what YOU can do in your hospital and community to get this contract cancelled, and fight for a health system free from genocide enablers, data surveillance and privatisation.

Speakers to be announced!

Medact Brighton group meeting – November
2024-11-06 19:00 - 20:30
Since 2018, the Brighton group has been creating a space in the city for health workers and friends to come together, to learn from each other, support each other, and to fight together for health justice.

If you want to get involved email brighton@medact.org.

Medact Leeds group meeting: November
2024-11-07 19:30 - 20:30

Medact Glasgow group meeting: November
2024-11-12 18:30 - 19:30

Help end the Hostile Environment in the Welsh NHS!
2024-11-12 19:00 - 21:00 | Environment Centre, Pier Street, Swansea, SA1 1RY, United Kingdom
In Wales we’re proud to be a Nation of Sanctuary and welcome refugees from across the world. But it’s not enough. At Patients Not Passports Wales, our research has shown that in the past few years over 1,000 people in Wales, including children and pregnant women, have been charged for NHS care because they were unable to prove that the UK is their home. We will never know how many others have come to harm because they have been too scared to seek medical help. But we are organising for change!

Next month, we are organising an event to bring together all those who believe that healthcare is a human right, and should be accessible to everyone, regardless of their immigration status.

We want to build a vibrant group across Wales who can shine a light on this injustice, help support those who are denied access to care because of their immigration status and pressure politicians to change this cruel system.

In Wales we have a government that has extended free NHS care to refused asylum seekers – but many other migrants, including people who have been trafficked and those on spousal visas whose relationships have broken down, are still excluded. This event will share the updated Patients Not Passports toolkit, which provides all the information needed to support anyone who is struggling to access NHS care because of their immigration status. We will also be screening the brilliant NHS Borderlands documentary which tells one woman’s story of the impact of borders in our healthcare system.

Join us at the Environment Centre in Swansea. Tea and coffee will be available, and support is available for travel and childcare costs. Please contact us at pnpwales@gmail.com to let us know your needs!

Medact North East group meeting: November
2024-11-13 20:00 - 21:00

Nuclear Weapons Group meeting: November
2024-11-14 18:00 - 19:30

London Housing & Health meeting: November
2024-11-14 18:45 - 20:30 | Pelican House, 144 Cambridge Heath Road, London, London, E1 5QJ, United Kingdom
Medact’s Housing & Health Group is organising to improve policies for better access to secure and sustainable housing.

This includes working alongside local groups to support local campaigns, as well as demanding policy change on a national level for better support for social housing, community-owned housing stock and protections for renters.

In this meeting, you will be hearing from the members involved in our work, get updates on our local organising, and help us develop the next steps and identify potential campaigns in other boroughs.

You don’t have to be a regular member of the Economic Justice &Health group or a health worker to get involved – everyone is welcome.

The meeting is hybrid, on Zoom and the in-person at our office in Bethnal Green:

Medact, 1st Floor, Pelican House144 Cambridge Heath RdLondon, E1 5QJ

Sign up to the Medact London email list to hear about all Housing & Health London Meetings! If you’re unable to attend meetings but keen to get involved or develop a local campaign, you can contact Jordi: jordilopezbotey@medact.org.

Register to attend!

Musicians for Peace and Disarmament orchestral concert
2024-11-14 19:30 - 21:30 | St. James’s Church, 97 Piccadilly, London, W1 9LL
You are warmly invited to the next Concert for Peace. The MPD Chamber Orchestra returns to St James’s Church Piccadilly under the baton of our long-time supporter and Patron, Dame Jane Glover. She will be joined by two outstanding soloists, tenor Toby Spence and horn player Ben Goldscheider.

We are also delighted to announce that Kate Hudson (CND) will give a short address after the interval.

Felix Mendelssohn Overture: The HebridesBenjamin Britten Serenade for Tenor, Horn & StringsFelix Mendelssohn Symphony No.4 Italian

General Admission – £25General Admission Concessions (Over 65s, Students, Unwaged) – £20All proceeds donated to the peace movement.

Tickets can be purchased here.

Securitisation of Health group meeting: November
2024-11-20 18:00 - 19:30
Note this meeting is POSTPONED! Please join us at our next meeting on December 18th: sign up here!

What is the securitisation of health?

A number of policing and counter-extremism measures are embedded by the government into UK health services, which at times require health workers to work closely with the police and other security agencies.

These measures risk undermining therapeutic relationships, confidentiality and trust in practitioners – as well as drawing health services and workers into becoming an arm of policing and counter-terror agencies.

Through research and campaigns, Medact aims to shift understandings of ‘security’, from typically “hard” measures (border enforcement, a punitive criminal justice system, counter-terror measures) and advocate for collective and human security, health and wellbeing. Read more about our work on Securitisation here.

About the group

The Securitisation of Health group is for health workers interested in working on these issues through campaigning, lobbying and research. New members are welcome!

If you have any questions or concerns about attending, please email our Campaign Lead Sarah Lasoye at sarahlasoye@medact.org.

This event will be held online on Zoom.

East London Community Meetings – Justice for Omisha / Patients Not Passports
2024-11-27 19:00 - 2024-11-30 13:00
The Justice for Omisha and Patients Not Passports campaign is inviting migrants who have been impacted by NHS charges or struggled to access the NHS, alongside healthcare workers and community allies, to two open meetings in East London to discuss how we can fight for a more just healthcare system together! Folks are open to attend either or both meetings, and food will be provided.

Meeting 1

Wednesday 27 November, 7–9pm

Pelican House, Room 104, 144 Cambridge Heath Road, Bethnal Green, E1 5QJ

Meeting 2

Saturday 30 November, 11am–1pm

Studio 1, Redbridge Library, Clements Rd, Ilford IG1 1EA

Medact Bristol group meeting: December
2024-12-02 18:00 - 19:00

Medact New Joiners
2024-12-02 19:30 - 20:30 | Zoom
Have you joined Medact any time in the last twelve months? Are you not yet involved in your closest local group or one of our central campaigns or research network?

Welcome to our movement of health workers for health justice! We’d love to meet you at our next New Joiners meeting. This will be a friendly, informal and interactive session and an opportunity to get to know us and let us get to know you.

Some of the things that we’ll be discussing include:

What is Medact?

What do we mean by health justice?

How do we believe change happens?

What can it look like to organise together in the Medact movement?

Whether you’ve just joined or joined a while ago but are yet to find your place, please do come along and share this welcoming space with us.

If you have any questions about attending, drop Cal, one of our Movement Organisers, an email at calumbarnes@medact.org.

Medact Leeds group meeting: December
2024-12-05 19:30 - 20:30
The Leeds group come together monthly for meetings, mostly online and sometimes in person! Medact Leeds are organising locally for climate and health justice as part of the Health for a Green New Deal network, and also taking action to end the hostile environment, campaigning for Patients Not Passports. All are welcome. Please sign up to the mailing list to join the group.

Medact Glasgow group meeting: December
2024-12-10 18:30 - 19:30

Medact North East group meeting: December
2024-12-11 20:00 - 21:00
