What does it mean to be a good doctor when so much illness is produced beyond the walls of healthcare?

In this episode of the RCP Medicine Podcast, Dr Rohan Mehra speaks with paediatrician, public health researcher and broadcaster Dr Guddi Singh about health inequality, medical professionalism and her emerging concept of Justice-Based Medicine.

Drawing on clinical experience, doctoral research and her BBC Radio 4 series Three Ages of Child, Dr Singh explores how poverty, housing, food insecurity, education and structural inequality enter the consulting room - and why understanding these conditions makes us not only more compassionate, but more clinically effective.

The conversation examines the moral injury clinicians experience when they know what patients need but cannot provide it; the limits of the traditional “heroic fixer” model of medicine; and how physicians can combine scientific excellence with social understanding, collaboration and moral courage.

The episode also highlights communities already creating health beyond formal healthcare settings, and the work of WHAM - the Wellbeing and Health Action Movement - to help clinicians turn concern about inequality into practical, collective action.

BIOGRAPHY: Dr Guddi Singh is a Cambridge- and Harvard-trained neurodevelopmental and social paediatrician, public health researcher and broadcaster whose work explores what it means to practise good medicine when so much ill health is socially produced. Working clinically on the frontline and academically at King’s College London, her doctoral research examines how health professionals experience and respond to the social determinants of health. Through this work, she is developing the concept of Justice-Based Medicine, combining scientific excellence with social understanding, moral literacy and action on inequality. Guddi has worked with the World Health Organization, co-founded WHAM - the Wellbeing and Health Action Movement - and leads the award-finalist Powering Up programme. She was named a Global Top 30 Improver by the International Forum on Quality and Safety in Healthcare. Her broadcasting includes work for the BBC, Channel 4 and Al Jazeera, including the award-winning BBC One documentary, Why Is Covid Killing People of Colour?, and BBC Radio 4’s hugely influential Three Ages of Child.

Resources 

• WHAM: https://www.whamproject.co.uk/
• Three Ages of Child: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/m002k385
• Race and Health Matters, a podcast on workforce inequality for the NHS Race and Health Observatory https://www.youtube.com/@nhsraceandhealthobservatory
• More than Medicine substack: https://drguddisingh.substack.com/
• "Leadership from below, change from within: revitalising medical professionalism through social justice": https://bmjleader.bmj.com/content/7/Suppl_2/e000817
• RCP Commentary - https://www.rcp.ac.uk/126813

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