Ewen Speed
Biographic Data
| ID | 306646 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ewen Speed |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ewen |
| FAMILY NAME | Speed |
| SIGNATURE | SPEED E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Essex |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3850-922X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 156 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 36 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Collaborating across academia and local government: Augmenting the use of academically produced evidence
In the UK, increasing attention is being given to strengthening the use of academically produced evidence within local government. Recent investment from the National Institute for Health and Care Research has supported various initiatives designed to foster closer collaboration between universities and local authorities. This includes the Health Determinants Research Collaborations (HDRCs) and a separate researcher-in-residence programme focused…
Trajectories of Despair: Understanding the Social Determinants of Suicidality Through Differential Vulnerability
Suicide is a major public health issue. There are over 700,000 deaths globally and rising levels of suicidal ideation are reported. While epidemiological research has demonstrated associations between social factors and suicide, further attention is needed to understand the processes through which these factors combine, accumulate and shape vulnerability over time. Drawing on 28 qualitative interviews with third-sector suicide-prevention practiti…
Pandemics, populism and bioethics: A critical approach
Why Is Lived Experience Absent From Social Security Policymaking? - Corrigendum
Why is Lived Experience Absent from Social Security Policymaking
Processes of public engagement in decision-making and research are increasingly discussed as ways of addressing democratic deficits in high-income countries. In this paper, we explore why these processes of engagement and involvement in the UK have been less successfully incorporated into social security policymaking aimed at the out-of-work by drawing a comparison with health policy, a sphere in which these processes have now become orthodox (al…
The effects of literacy on health in Gypsies, Roma and Travellers (GRT): A systematic review and narrative synthesis
Doing together: Reflections on facilitating the co-production of participatory action research with marginalised populations
Recognising the limited literature detailing the practical application of co-production principles and practices within sport, exercise and health research, critical reflections on co-production principles and practice are shared here, drawing on two participatory action research (PAR) projects in the United Kingdom (UK). Co-production and PAR are distinguished, and their commonalities discussed. Both projects were facilitated by occupational the…
Moving on in uncertain times: A goodbye
Quality-of-life measurement in depression trials: A consumerist relic
Quality-of-life measurement in depression is advocated as a patient-centred indicator of recovery, but may instead enhance the mimetic authority of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) which have been roundly critiqued in mental health. In this paper we draw on the social life of methods approach to extend the well-developed critique of RCTs into the field of quality-of-life measurement. We accomplish this through consideration and critique of the…
Pandemics, infection control and social justice: Challenges for policy evaluation
Towards a theoretically grounded, social democratic public health
Challenge and opportunity: Making sense of the ‘first lockdown’ experience of families with young children and health and social care practitioners in Southend-on-Sea (the United Kingdom)
COVID-19 has had a significant and measurable impact on individuals and families in economically deprived areas both in the United Kingdom and internationally. This article examines issues of community resilience and service adaptability and focuses on the period during the first lockdown in the United Kingdom (May to July 2020). Data were collected from members of the local community in Southend, with specific reference to the ‘A Better Start So…
Ethnic disparities in health & social care workers’ exposure, protection, and clinical management of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK
This paper examines determinants of ethnic disparities in workplace risks of COVID-19 among health and social care workers (HCWs) in the UK. This was undertaken to inform public health policy in the management of COVID-19 relating to health and social care provision. A cross-sectional survey was administered in July–August 2020 (n = 456) to elicit HCWs’ experiences of COVID-19 management in the workplace and their perceptions of exposure, persona…
An occupational justice perspective on playing football and living with mental distress
Physical inactivity is a global public health priority, yet people living with a disability or long-term health condition, such as those who experience mental distress, continue to face inequalities and barriers to participation in sport and physical activity. These inequalities are considered an occupational injustice, in terms of participation in health enhancing occupations being restricted for these groups of people, despite them wanting to b…
Comparative optimism about infection and recovery from Covid‐19; Implications for adherence with lockdown advice
BACKGROUND: Comparative optimism, the belief that negative events are more likely to happen to others rather than to oneself, is well established in health risk research. It is unknown, however, whether comparative optimism also permeates people's health expectations and potentially behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic. OBJECTIVES: Data were collected through an international survey (N = 6485) exploring people's thoughts and psychosocial behavi…
They say jump, we say how high?” conditionality, sanctioning and incentivising disabled people into the UK labour market
This paper focuses on the experiences of disabled people in the UK assigned to the Employment and Support Allowance Work Related Activity Group. Specifically, it considers the impact of processes of conditionality and sanctions on this group. The research was designed, conducted and analysed collaboratively between a disabled people’s user-led organisation (DPULO) and an academic team. The research documents the negative impact that processes of …
Populism, pestilence and plague in the time of coronavirus
Purpose This paper aims to explore right wing populist government responses to the coronavirus pandemic. Design/methodology/approach This paper is a narrative overview of right-wing populist policies and strategies, which is loosely structured around fascistic themes set out in Albert Camus’ allegorical novel, The Plague . Findings Although individual responses to the coronavirus pandemic among right-wing populists differ, they appear to coalesce…
Populism and health policy: Three International Case Studies of Right-Wing Populist Policy Frames
Over the past decade, some of the world's most stable parliamentary democracies have witnessed a revival in right-wing populist political parties, movements and leaders. Although there is a growing body of theoretical and empirical literature documenting the rise of populism, there has been very little exploration of the implications for health policy of this important political development. In this article, we draw from three illustrative intern…
The reform of the English National Health Service: Professional dominance, countervailing powers and the buyers’ revolt
Risk assessment practice within primary mental health care: A logics perspective
From the 1980s onwards, discourses of risk have continued to grow, almost in ubiquity. Ideas and practices of risk and risk aversion have extended to UK mental health care where services are expected to assess and manage risks, and high-quality clinical assessment has been revised to incorporate risk assessment. This article problematises practices of risk assessment in mental health provision, focussing on the base-rate problem. It presents an a…
Critical analysis, credibility, and the politics of publishing in an era of ‘fake news’
Academic publishing is a growth industry, with around 2.5 million English language articles published each year (Ware & Mabe, 2015). Truth (2012) described a ‘publication tsunami that is now an exp
Building spaces for controversial public engagement – Exploring and challenging democratic deficits in NHS marketization
The Brighton Citizen's Health Services Survey (BCHSS) was developed to explore and potentially challenge how knowledge is used and by whom in the production of local health commissioning institutions and relations. Through the creation of an ‘animating set of questions’, it sought to open up spaces through which to make visible some of the ways of knowing and valuing the NHS and health services that had been minimised through the commensuration p…
Digital technologies and the biomedicalisation of everyday activities: The case of walking and cycling
Walking and cycling have been transformed by digital technologies, which range from mapping apps for wayfinding, through ‘wearables’ which monitor activity, to social media apps for comparing activity within social groups. Some technologies are explicitly orientated to health projects, others are not, yet all have potentially profound effects on bodies, health‐orientated identities, and understandings of health. This paper uses the concept of bio…
Beware Zombies and Unicorns: Toward Critical Patient and Public Involvement in Health Research in a Neoliberal Context
Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) in UK National Health Service (NHS) research has become an imperative in policy and practice. However, lack of clarity on what PPI is (or might be) has given rise to a poorly monitored, complex field of activity, variously framed by the expectations of policy makers, funders, host organisations, researchers, health professionals, individual recruits, volunteers, activists and third sector organisations. The no…
The anonymity paradox in patient engagement: Reputation, risk and web-based public feedback
The UK National Health Service (NHS) has long espoused patient and public engagement. Recent years have seen increasing use of internet-based methods of collecting feedback about patient experience and public and staff views about NHS services and priorities. Often hailed as a means of facilitating participative democratic patient engagement, these processes raise a number of complex issues. A key aspect of it is the opportunity for comment to be…
We Really Do Know What You Do: A Comparison of Reports from 11 Year Olds and Their Parents in Respect of Parental Economic Activity and Occupation
It is widely assumed that children, especially younger children and those in poorer circumstances, are unreliable informants of parental occupation and related characteristics, thereby precluding the measurement of social class in much research involving children. In a comparison of reports of parental economic activity and occupation by 11 year olds and their parents in the West of Scotland 11 to 16 Study, the assumption is found to be unwarrant…
Uncovering Recovery: The Resistible Rise of Recovery and Resilience
Discourses of recovery and resilience have risen to positions of dominance in the mental health field. Models of recovery and resilience enjoy purchase, in both policy and practice, across a range of settings from self-described psychiatric survivors through to mental health charities through to statutory mental health service providers. Despite this ubiquity, there is confusion about what recovery means. In this article we problematize notions o…
Patients, consumers and survivors: A case study of mental health service user discourses
Populism and health policy: Three International Case Studies of Right-Wing Populist Policy Frames
Over the past decade, some of the world's most stable parliamentary democracies have witnessed a revival in right-wing populist political parties, movements and leaders. Although there is a growing body of theoretical and empirical literature documenting the rise of populism, there has been very little exploration of the implications for health policy of this important political development. In this article, we draw from three illustrative intern…
Beware Zombies and Unicorns: Toward Critical Patient and Public Involvement in Health Research in a Neoliberal Context
Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) in UK National Health Service (NHS) research has become an imperative in policy and practice. However, lack of clarity on what PPI is (or might be) has given rise to a poorly monitored, complex field of activity, variously framed by the expectations of policy makers, funders, host organisations, researchers, health professionals, individual recruits, volunteers, activists and third sector organisations. The no…
Varieties of co-production in public services: Time banks in a UK health policy context
Time banking is a third-sector initiative that enacts principles of co-production and offers a model with which to understand how users can become actively involved with professionals and other stakeholders in the delivery of public services. This article explores possible lines of tension between principles that underpin time banking practices and principles informing the health policy field in the United Kingdom. We develop a framework rooted i…
Logics of marginalisation in health and social care reform: Integration, choice, and provider-blind provision
The period 2010–2013 was a time of far-reaching structural reforms of the National Health Service in England. Of particular interest in this paper is the way in which radical critiques of the reform process were marginalised by pragmatic concerns about how to maintain the market-competition thrust of the reforms while avoiding potential fragmentation. We draw on the Essex school of political discourse theory and develop a ‘nodal’ analytical frame…
Digital technologies and the biomedicalisation of everyday activities: The case of walking and cycling
Walking and cycling have been transformed by digital technologies, which range from mapping apps for wayfinding, through ‘wearables’ which monitor activity, to social media apps for comparing activity within social groups. Some technologies are explicitly orientated to health projects, others are not, yet all have potentially profound effects on bodies, health‐orientated identities, and understandings of health. This paper uses the concept of bio…
The Health and Social Care Act for England 2012: The extension of ‘new professionalism’
The 2012 Health and Social Care Act, introduced by the coalition government, has been seen as fundamentally changing the form and content of publicly funded health care provision in England. The legislation was hugely controversial and widely criticized. Much of this criticism pointed to the ways in which the reforms undermined the funding of the National Health Service, and challenged the founding principle of free universal provision. In this c…
Civil society and the Health and Social Care Act in England and Wales: Theory and praxis for the twenty-first century
Why is Lived Experience Absent from Social Security Policymaking
Processes of public engagement in decision-making and research are increasingly discussed as ways of addressing democratic deficits in high-income countries. In this paper, we explore why these processes of engagement and involvement in the UK have been less successfully incorporated into social security policymaking aimed at the out-of-work by drawing a comparison with health policy, a sphere in which these processes have now become orthodox (al…
An occupational justice perspective on playing football and living with mental distress
Physical inactivity is a global public health priority, yet people living with a disability or long-term health condition, such as those who experience mental distress, continue to face inequalities and barriers to participation in sport and physical activity. These inequalities are considered an occupational injustice, in terms of participation in health enhancing occupations being restricted for these groups of people, despite them wanting to b…
The reform of the English National Health Service: Professional dominance, countervailing powers and the buyers’ revolt
The anonymity paradox in patient engagement: Reputation, risk and web-based public feedback
The UK National Health Service (NHS) has long espoused patient and public engagement. Recent years have seen increasing use of internet-based methods of collecting feedback about patient experience and public and staff views about NHS services and priorities. Often hailed as a means of facilitating participative democratic patient engagement, these processes raise a number of complex issues. A key aspect of it is the opportunity for comment to be…
Quality-of-life measurement in depression trials: A consumerist relic
Quality-of-life measurement in depression is advocated as a patient-centred indicator of recovery, but may instead enhance the mimetic authority of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) which have been roundly critiqued in mental health. In this paper we draw on the social life of methods approach to extend the well-developed critique of RCTs into the field of quality-of-life measurement. We accomplish this through consideration and critique of the…
They say jump, we say how high?” conditionality, sanctioning and incentivising disabled people into the UK labour market
This paper focuses on the experiences of disabled people in the UK assigned to the Employment and Support Allowance Work Related Activity Group. Specifically, it considers the impact of processes of conditionality and sanctions on this group. The research was designed, conducted and analysed collaboratively between a disabled people’s user-led organisation (DPULO) and an academic team. The research documents the negative impact that processes of …
Populism, pestilence and plague in the time of coronavirus
Purpose This paper aims to explore right wing populist government responses to the coronavirus pandemic. Design/methodology/approach This paper is a narrative overview of right-wing populist policies and strategies, which is loosely structured around fascistic themes set out in Albert Camus’ allegorical novel, The Plague . Findings Although individual responses to the coronavirus pandemic among right-wing populists differ, they appear to coalesce…
Risk assessment practice within primary mental health care: A logics perspective
From the 1980s onwards, discourses of risk have continued to grow, almost in ubiquity. Ideas and practices of risk and risk aversion have extended to UK mental health care where services are expected to assess and manage risks, and high-quality clinical assessment has been revised to incorporate risk assessment. This article problematises practices of risk assessment in mental health provision, focussing on the base-rate problem. It presents an a…
Building spaces for controversial public engagement – Exploring and challenging democratic deficits in NHS marketization
The Brighton Citizen's Health Services Survey (BCHSS) was developed to explore and potentially challenge how knowledge is used and by whom in the production of local health commissioning institutions and relations. Through the creation of an ‘animating set of questions’, it sought to open up spaces through which to make visible some of the ways of knowing and valuing the NHS and health services that had been minimised through the commensuration p…
We Really Do Know What You Do: A Comparison of Reports from 11 Year Olds and Their Parents in Respect of Parental Economic Activity and Occupation
It is widely assumed that children, especially younger children and those in poorer circumstances, are unreliable informants of parental occupation and related characteristics, thereby precluding the measurement of social class in much research involving children. In a comparison of reports of parental economic activity and occupation by 11 year olds and their parents in the West of Scotland 11 to 16 Study, the assumption is found to be unwarrant…
Irish Mental Health Social Movements: A Consideration of Movement Habitus
There has been a lack of any concerted mental health service users‘ movement within the Republic of Ireland. Mental health service users’ movements elsewhere have a marked orientation towards strategies of empowerment and the provision of peer advocacy and support for mental health service users. Two potential user habituses (drawn from the literature) are expounded and discussed, in a context of transformations they have effected in the mental h…
Patients, consumers and survivors: A case study of mental health service user discourses
Varieties of co-production in public services: Time banks in a UK health policy context
Time banking is a third-sector initiative that enacts principles of co-production and offers a model with which to understand how users can become actively involved with professionals and other stakeholders in the delivery of public services. This article explores possible lines of tension between principles that underpin time banking practices and principles informing the health policy field in the United Kingdom. We develop a framework rooted i…
Uncovering Recovery: The Resistible Rise of Recovery and Resilience
Discourses of recovery and resilience have risen to positions of dominance in the mental health field. Models of recovery and resilience enjoy purchase, in both policy and practice, across a range of settings from self-described psychiatric survivors through to mental health charities through to statutory mental health service providers. Despite this ubiquity, there is confusion about what recovery means. In this article we problematize notions o…
Understanding patient and professional conceptions of “trust”. Lessons from the Pebl project, an experiment in anonymous micro-blogging for the continuous assessment of patient experience
Introduction: Commissioners and service providers in Primary Care need reliable and regular information about how health services fit into the lives of the users. Indeed the requirement for this kind of information is becoming ever more pressing as the patient voice gains power, and responding to the priorities and perspectives of communities of service users climbs the healthcare agenda. It is also increasingly important for providers and commis…
The Health and Social Care Act for England 2012: The extension of ‘new professionalism’
The 2012 Health and Social Care Act, introduced by the coalition government, has been seen as fundamentally changing the form and content of publicly funded health care provision in England. The legislation was hugely controversial and widely criticized. Much of this criticism pointed to the ways in which the reforms undermined the funding of the National Health Service, and challenged the founding principle of free universal provision. In this c…
Civil society and the Health and Social Care Act in England and Wales: Theory and praxis for the twenty-first century
A note on the utility of austerity
Austerity hangs like a global spectre over health and welfare spending and provision. It is the new orthodoxy, an accepted popular ‘fact’ that we are all living in an ‘age of austerity’ (Farnsworth
Because You’re Worth It”: A Discourse Analysis of the Gendered Rhetoric of the ADHD Woman
Drawing on the traditions of discursive psychology and critical discourse analysis this study examined the presentation of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in women in a sample of the most commonly identified online YouTube videos on this topic. The video material selected represented a combination of first-person testimonies from the “sufferer” and the sharing of “expertise” by “professionals.” Analysis involved the identification…
Logics of marginalisation in health and social care reform: Integration, choice, and provider-blind provision
The period 2010–2013 was a time of far-reaching structural reforms of the National Health Service in England. Of particular interest in this paper is the way in which radical critiques of the reform process were marginalised by pragmatic concerns about how to maintain the market-competition thrust of the reforms while avoiding potential fragmentation. We draw on the Essex school of political discourse theory and develop a ‘nodal’ analytical frame…
The anonymity paradox in patient engagement: Reputation, risk and web-based public feedback
The UK National Health Service (NHS) has long espoused patient and public engagement. Recent years have seen increasing use of internet-based methods of collecting feedback about patient experience and public and staff views about NHS services and priorities. Often hailed as a means of facilitating participative democratic patient engagement, these processes raise a number of complex issues. A key aspect of it is the opportunity for comment to be…
Beware Zombies and Unicorns: Toward Critical Patient and Public Involvement in Health Research in a Neoliberal Context
Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) in UK National Health Service (NHS) research has become an imperative in policy and practice. However, lack of clarity on what PPI is (or might be) has given rise to a poorly monitored, complex field of activity, variously framed by the expectations of policy makers, funders, host organisations, researchers, health professionals, individual recruits, volunteers, activists and third sector organisations. The no…
Critical analysis, credibility, and the politics of publishing in an era of ‘fake news’
Academic publishing is a growth industry, with around 2.5 million English language articles published each year (Ware & Mabe, 2015). Truth (2012) described a ‘publication tsunami that is now an exp
Building spaces for controversial public engagement – Exploring and challenging democratic deficits in NHS marketization
The Brighton Citizen's Health Services Survey (BCHSS) was developed to explore and potentially challenge how knowledge is used and by whom in the production of local health commissioning institutions and relations. Through the creation of an ‘animating set of questions’, it sought to open up spaces through which to make visible some of the ways of knowing and valuing the NHS and health services that had been minimised through the commensuration p…
Digital technologies and the biomedicalisation of everyday activities: The case of walking and cycling
Walking and cycling have been transformed by digital technologies, which range from mapping apps for wayfinding, through ‘wearables’ which monitor activity, to social media apps for comparing activity within social groups. Some technologies are explicitly orientated to health projects, others are not, yet all have potentially profound effects on bodies, health‐orientated identities, and understandings of health. This paper uses the concept of bio…
The reform of the English National Health Service: Professional dominance, countervailing powers and the buyers’ revolt
Risk assessment practice within primary mental health care: A logics perspective
From the 1980s onwards, discourses of risk have continued to grow, almost in ubiquity. Ideas and practices of risk and risk aversion have extended to UK mental health care where services are expected to assess and manage risks, and high-quality clinical assessment has been revised to incorporate risk assessment. This article problematises practices of risk assessment in mental health provision, focussing on the base-rate problem. It presents an a…
Comparative optimism about infection and recovery from Covid‐19; Implications for adherence with lockdown advice
BACKGROUND: Comparative optimism, the belief that negative events are more likely to happen to others rather than to oneself, is well established in health risk research. It is unknown, however, whether comparative optimism also permeates people's health expectations and potentially behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic. OBJECTIVES: Data were collected through an international survey (N = 6485) exploring people's thoughts and psychosocial behavi…
They say jump, we say how high?” conditionality, sanctioning and incentivising disabled people into the UK labour market
This paper focuses on the experiences of disabled people in the UK assigned to the Employment and Support Allowance Work Related Activity Group. Specifically, it considers the impact of processes of conditionality and sanctions on this group. The research was designed, conducted and analysed collaboratively between a disabled people’s user-led organisation (DPULO) and an academic team. The research documents the negative impact that processes of …
Populism, pestilence and plague in the time of coronavirus
Purpose This paper aims to explore right wing populist government responses to the coronavirus pandemic. Design/methodology/approach This paper is a narrative overview of right-wing populist policies and strategies, which is loosely structured around fascistic themes set out in Albert Camus’ allegorical novel, The Plague . Findings Although individual responses to the coronavirus pandemic among right-wing populists differ, they appear to coalesce…
Populism and health policy: Three International Case Studies of Right-Wing Populist Policy Frames
Over the past decade, some of the world's most stable parliamentary democracies have witnessed a revival in right-wing populist political parties, movements and leaders. Although there is a growing body of theoretical and empirical literature documenting the rise of populism, there has been very little exploration of the implications for health policy of this important political development. In this article, we draw from three illustrative intern…
Ethnic disparities in health & social care workers’ exposure, protection, and clinical management of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK
This paper examines determinants of ethnic disparities in workplace risks of COVID-19 among health and social care workers (HCWs) in the UK. This was undertaken to inform public health policy in the management of COVID-19 relating to health and social care provision. A cross-sectional survey was administered in July–August 2020 (n = 456) to elicit HCWs’ experiences of COVID-19 management in the workplace and their perceptions of exposure, persona…
An occupational justice perspective on playing football and living with mental distress
Physical inactivity is a global public health priority, yet people living with a disability or long-term health condition, such as those who experience mental distress, continue to face inequalities and barriers to participation in sport and physical activity. These inequalities are considered an occupational injustice, in terms of participation in health enhancing occupations being restricted for these groups of people, despite them wanting to b…
Pandemics, infection control and social justice: Challenges for policy evaluation
Political science (30 works) · Sociology (25 works) · Law (16 works) · Public relations (15 works) · Law (13 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Medicine (12 works) · Mental Health and Patient Involvement (12 works) · Politics (12 works) · Health care (11 works)