John R Ashton
Biographic Data
| ID | 5747896 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John R Ashton |
| GIVEN NAMES | John R |
| FAMILY NAME | Ashton |
| SIGNATURE | ASHTON J R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Regional Health |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 63 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 29 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 63 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1980 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
John Leonard McKnight, November 22,1931-November 2, 2024
Public Health and the origins of the Mersey Model of Harm Reduction
Jeremiah (Jerry) Noah Morris CBE, 1910–2009
Figure 1 Jerry Morris (1910–2009). The essence of Jerry's biography can be gleaned from a ‘Cochrane-lite’ review of obituaries that have appeared since his death on 28 October 2009.1–6 The father of post-war British social medicine, he was born at 3 Belgrave Street, Liverpool on 6 May 1910. According to the Financial Times , his father Nathan was a penniless Jewish educator who fled the pogroms of Czarist Russia and took the name Morris from the …
Sniffing glue is still a public health problem in adolescence
In the early 1980s, one of the main moral panics was glue sniffing by young teenagers. This phenomenon has been largely eclipsed in press reportage with the advent of heroin and various other hard drugs that appeared from the mid 1980s onwards. However, glue‐sniffing is still an issue, as evidenced from this paraphernalia found in an urban churchyard on Merseyside, UK. Figure 1 Glue sniffing paraphernalia found in urban churchyard
Elvis to Eminem
BACKGROUND: Rock and pop stars are frequently characterised as indulging in high-risk behaviours, with high-profile deaths amongst such musicians creating an impression of premature mortality. However, studies to date have not quantified differences between mortality experienced by such stars and general populations. OBJECTIVE: This study measures survival rates of famous musicians (n = 1064) from their point of fame and compares them to matched …
Adults at 12? Trends in puberty and their public health consequences
Adults at 12
Measuring paternal discrepancy and its public health consequences
Paternal discrepancy (PD) occurs when a child is identified as being biologically fathered by someone other than the man who believes he is the father. This paper examines published evidence on levels of PD and its public health consequences. Rates vary between studies from 0.8% to 30% (median 3.7%, n = 17). Using information from genetic and behavioural studies, the article identifies those who conceive younger, live in deprivation, are in long …
On air pollution and inequalities, environmental justice, and the public health
This month’s journal brings together a collection of papers focusing on the environment and raises important questions about environmental justice, a concept that has been current in North America for some years but that will still be new to many of our readers. We carry a glossary by Tunstall and colleagues on Places and Health that explores some fundamental concepts of geography that are relevant to our craft. Two editorials explore the issues …
The promiscuous 10
A high price is paid by ignoring the needs of the promiscuous 10% With few exceptions every month uncovers more evidence of the declining sexual health of the UK population.1,2 Levels of chlamydia have more than doubled in the past 10 years,1 nearly forgotten infections such as syphilis have returned to plague new generations3 and overall, sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are higher than at any time since the National Health Service began i…
Prenatal origins of disease in later life and a fair amount of cardiovascular public health
In this issue there is a set of papers on various aspects of heart disease, with some cross reference to the origins of adult health in prenatal life and the Barker hypothesis. A paper from the Netherlands seems to show that twice weekly, rather than weekly gymnastics is needed to obtain full health benefits from this level of physical activity, while there is evidence of the “inverse care law” being alive and well in primary care in Sheffield. S…
Getting the language right is sometimes more than political correctness
[Graphic][1] Inappropriate signing for disabled people at Hong Kong’s new airport. Handicap is a sign of failure when the provision for disabled people is inadequate. [1]: /embed/graphic-1.gif
Celebrating New York’s public health pioneers
All professions are conspiracies against the laity” (George Bernard-Shaw)
The way in which professions acquire prestige, power and wealth is by taking unto themselves a body of knowledge and expertise and only relinquishing it in
The world is a fast flowing river
MI myopia: finding the focus on angina MI IS EASYWhy does the gaze of "coronary heart disease" epidemiology focus on fatal or non-fatal myocardial infarction (MI)?One reason is that it is easy to study.Cardiologists recognise a number of acute coronary syndromes, of which MI is one, which are often clinically dramatic and precipitate hospital admission.Once in hospital, most patients are investigated with biochemical markers of myocardial necrosi…
Some by Fire and Some by Their Own Hand
In this issue there is a mixed bag. We explore media coverage as a risk factor in suicide, something for which there is clearly a case-chance would be a fine thing if we could get the media generally signed up to a prevention approach, but Stack and his colleagues wish to go further and explore the specific aspects of media coverage that are conducive to copycat events. By "fire" in this issue, I refer to the paper by Kinra and Black on landmine …
An Outing for Ethics and Public Health
This month we carry three complementary sets of observations on ethics, science, and public health, including a consideration of the concept of the neutral expert and an exploration of how public health ethics can be accommodated in consumerism. See pages 3–6 Speaker’s corner challenges the conventional epidemiological focus of cardiovascular research on myocardial infarction rather than angina as a hard end point, and
Starting a rumour, following Christopher Columbus, and spending other people’s money
Context: A previous study showed that significantly more boys were born in southern latitudes in Europe than in northern latitudes and the converse pattern was observed in North America
Of Greek Goddesses and Matters of Life and Death
In this issue we introduce our new Hygieia feature, based on Minerva in our parent journal. We hope Hygieia’s family tree will provide the genetic wherewithal for a flourishing and popular page. Future issues will carry short pieces reporting on findings from various journals ably copy-tasted by our colleague Harvey Marcovitch, the BMJ Journals Syndication Editor. See page394 At a time when the world is digesting the implications of the next stag…
Success has 100 parents, failure is an orphan”
In the academic world, we are taught that plagiary is more or less the ultimate sin, yet in public health practice we are suffering from a deficit of plagiary and unwillingness
You shouldn’t be in public health if you can’t start a rumour”
You shouldn't be in public health if you can't start a rumour" I have always thought that being able to arouse the interest of the general public in important issues that may not be at the forefront of their minds was an essential aspect of public health practice.Influencing channels of communication from various quarters simultaneously to create a dynamic for change seems to me to be an essential skill in the public health practitioner's toolbox…
A Bumper Issue, Touching on Sars, Health Impact Assessment, and Much Else
According to Martyn Regan, “capturing, remembering, and learning from these experiences will enable the wider international community to be better prepared for not only SARS, but also for the next emerging infection that we will undoubtedly have to face in the future”. Regan is writing about his visit to Canada as part of a group appraising the reaction to SARS in that country. We try to make our own contribution to learning from SARS in this iss…
A Winter Miscellany of Cycling, Sport, Social Capital, and Epidemiology
A varied issue this month, with contributions ranging from the theoretical concerning the role of carcinogenesis in evolution and a new consideration of the concept of causation, to the challenge of evaluation of a mega environmental public health intervention in the form of a national cycle network in the United Kingdom. See pages 86, 89, 96 Our Speaker’s corner highlights the Argentinean paradox of inequalities in child health, with both diseas…
Mental Health, Unemployment, Tobacco, Waste, and Pigs
In a bumper edition for summer, we include substantial contributions on two major threats to public health: tobacco and unemployment, and in addition we address the vexed issue of the role of psychosocial factors. All three topics are given a treatment that should generate a lively debate. Starting with tobacco and the tobacco industry, a paper from Nicole Fields and Simon Chapman from Australia (Simon being the Editor of our sister journal, Toba…
Type I and type II errors exist in public health practice too
Epidemiologists are familiar with the concept of type I and type II errors in epidemiological research, but type I and type II errors exist in a different sense
More on Sars and the evidence base for public health
In this issue we have a final commentary on the debate about the return of SARS and three papers covering various aspects of the epidemic: Syed and colleagues report on their experience of travelling in the SARS zones during the outbreak and their perception, as travellers, of the measures taken; Leung and colleagues, from Hong Kong, report on the impact of community psychological response on personal preventive measures taken; while Lau provides…
Measuring paternal discrepancy and its public health consequences
Paternal discrepancy (PD) occurs when a child is identified as being biologically fathered by someone other than the man who believes he is the father. This paper examines published evidence on levels of PD and its public health consequences. Rates vary between studies from 0.8% to 30% (median 3.7%, n = 17). Using information from genetic and behavioural studies, the article identifies those who conceive younger, live in deprivation, are in long …
Elvis to Eminem
BACKGROUND: Rock and pop stars are frequently characterised as indulging in high-risk behaviours, with high-profile deaths amongst such musicians creating an impression of premature mortality. However, studies to date have not quantified differences between mortality experienced by such stars and general populations. OBJECTIVE: This study measures survival rates of famous musicians (n = 1064) from their point of fame and compares them to matched …
Adults at 12? Trends in puberty and their public health consequences
Adults at 12
The promiscuous 10
A high price is paid by ignoring the needs of the promiscuous 10% With few exceptions every month uncovers more evidence of the declining sexual health of the UK population.1,2 Levels of chlamydia have more than doubled in the past 10 years,1 nearly forgotten infections such as syphilis have returned to plague new generations3 and overall, sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are higher than at any time since the National Health Service began i…
Something Old, Something New
In this issue we carry a Glossary of public health history that may prove controversial; debate is welcome. Speaker’s Corner addresses the challenge of providing a systematic evidence base to tackle inequalities in health, something that becomes evermore pressing as the limitations of biomedical evaluation become apparent. This is reinforced by a rare contribution on social inequalities in health in the United States from Harvard. An optimistic n…
Health and greening the city
See page 913 Tokyo is one of the world’s great new metropolitan areas; when I first visited it, it reminded me powerfully of Fritz Lang’s prescient classic Metropolis . Space is at an absolute premium and conducting the normal routines of everyday life can seem like a major challenge. The contemporary public health issues are mostly to be found there. Fortunately for Tokyo and its citizens, Takehito Takano and his group at
Developing theories and methods for practice
In this issue we carry a number of convergent papers on Theory and Methods that will contribute to the debate about “fit for purpose” academic support for practice. From the United States, Dr Roux provides a comprehensive glossary of terms for the increasingly important multilevel analysis, while Wardle and colleagues explore the use of a home affluence scale as an alternative means of assessing socioeconomic status in adolescence. See pages 588,…
Public Health Observatories—the key to timely public health intelligence in the new century
One of the proposals in the British Our Healthier Nation public health strategy is that “ . . . in order to strengthen the availability and use of information about health at the local level we will ensure that there is a Public Health Observatory in each . . . region of the country.” These observatories will be closely linked with universities to help bring an academic rigour to their work. Their tasks will be to support local bodies by: The nee…
Patterns of discussion and decision-making amongst abortion patients
Discussion and decision-making amongst Wessex women who obtained an induced abortion at two centres are studied. The most important discussants were family doctors, boy-friends, girl-friends, husbands, mothers and pregnancy counsellors. In the majority of key discussions which occurred the patient had been able to discuss the pregnancy fully, had a sympathetic reception and met a discussant who was favourable to her having a termination. However,…
Experiences of Women Refused National Health Service Abortion
Experiences of Women Refused National Health Service Abortion
Out of 197 Wessex women undergoing a legal abortion at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) clinic at Brighton, 31 (15·7%) had already been refused a termination of pregnancy by at least one National Health Service doctor in Wessex. Almost all of these pregnancies were terminated for reasons covered by the social clause of the 1967 Abortion Act. The principal reasons given for refusal of termination were that the women had insufficient g…
Components of delay amongst women obtaining termination of pregnancy
A study of the factors involved in delay amongst a group of Wessex women obtaining induced abortions is reported and the importance of age is stressed. Only 47% of women aged 17–18 years obtained their operation before 12 weeks gestation compared with more than 70% of women of other age groups. The implications of this for the health of these women is discussed and the case stated for the development of adequate sex education, birth control and e…
Sex Education and Contraceptive Practice Amongst Abortion Patients
Three hundred and eight Wessex women obtaining induced abortions in the National Health Service, or in a charitable clinic, were interviewed at the time of their operation. Information was obtained as to their sources of sexual knowledge, their use and experience of contraception and their intentions with regard to sterilization in the future. Whilst there has apparently been an increase in the amount of sex education provided in schools over the…
Characteristics of special groups of abortion patients from one health district
Four special groups of women resident and obtaining abortions in one health district are described: women under 16 years and over 35 years, those undergoing a second or third abortion, and those obtaining operations later than 20 weeks gestation. These women rarely obtain adequate contraceptive advice and services, particularly when oral contraception has not proved to be suitable for them. It appears that some general practitioners do not offer …
Professor J N “Jerry” Morris
In this number Still publishing after all these yearsIn this number, we carry linked contributions from two of the great postwar public health practitioners, Professors Jerry Morris and Mervin Susser.Appropriately, we also initiate our new section, "The JECH Gallery", with a portrait of Jerry Morris.At the age of 90, Jerry Morris is still producing powerful contributions to public health and social medicine.Morris, together with his group from th…
Regional Conference on Public Health in South East Asia in the 21st century, Calcutta, 22–24 November 1999
Study objective-To investigate whether there is a mismatch within Britain between climate severity and housing quality ("inverse housing law") and whether this mismatch is associated with respiratory health. Design, setting and participants-Cross sectional observational study. Britain (Scotland, Wales and England). The 3023 male and 3694 female Health and Lifestyle Survey participants with valid data available on all relevant items. Main results-…
Still publishing after all these years
In this number Still publishing after all these yearsIn this number, we carry linked contributions from two of the great postwar public health practitioners, Professors Jerry Morris and Mervin Susser.Appropriately, we also initiate our new section, "The JECH Gallery", with a portrait of Jerry Morris.At the age of 90, Jerry Morris is still producing powerful contributions to public health and social medicine.Morris, together with his group from th…
Public Health Observatories—the key to timely public health intelligence in the new century
One of the proposals in the British Our Healthier Nation public health strategy is that “ . . . in order to strengthen the availability and use of information about health at the local level we will ensure that there is a Public Health Observatory in each . . . region of the country.” These observatories will be closely linked with universities to help bring an academic rigour to their work. Their tasks will be to support local bodies by: The nee…
Diversity for midsummer
In this issue, we offer a diversity of contributions on public health policy and practice and research. Since starting the section on Policy and Practice, the conceptual gap between public health “research” and “policy and practice” has been coming into a sharper focus, at least for the editors. Many university based researchers seem to have difficulty in going the next step from presenting research findings to what could or should be the consequ…
Elephant story 2
orn in Alicante, Spain, a physician and army surgeon Francisco Xavier Balmis, was the author of the first translation into Spanish of Moreau de La Sarthe's book on vaccine.In his edition, Balmis added a foreword to make the book more complete and understandable to the Spanish readers of both hemispheres.Recognition of his work in this translation and his previous travels in America to collect plants and medical data, made him the best candidate t…
We're doing it already.”
This is a very bad prognostic sign. When change is desperately needed, those who have been responsible for presiding over stagnation inevitably respond
Roots and Tributes
According to Spitzer, writing in this issue, Alvan R Feinstein “influenced the very meaning of clinical research. He eschewed the concept of the patient as merely the ultimate beneficiary of clinical research and closed the loop by demonstrating that the best clinical data were provided by the patient”. Full circle, then, from clinical epidemiology to “the doctor, the patient and the illness”. Diagnostic research needs to find new ways of produci…
Research to Make a Difference
In this issue there is a strong set of papers reporting research findings, but hopefully they contain within them help with Kipling's sixth question, “so what?”—research relevant to making a difference and certainly good enough. An editorial and linked paper throw light on the methodological problems in validating self reported smoking; something that is becoming more and more important now that governments are investing real resources in helping…
Plenty of Opinion and Not a Little Politics
One of the joys of editing the journal is the surprise that comes from offerings by authors which resonate with your own preoccupations and obsessions. In this issue, there seem to be many of these surprises and delights. Controversy surrounding the “precautionary principle” shows no sign of letting up, Tukker suggests a possible way forward to reconcile different world views of risk assessment and a commitment to ecology. This is timely and impo…
Health and greening the city
See page 913 Tokyo is one of the world’s great new metropolitan areas; when I first visited it, it reminded me powerfully of Fritz Lang’s prescient classic Metropolis . Space is at an absolute premium and conducting the normal routines of everyday life can seem like a major challenge. The contemporary public health issues are mostly to be found there. Fortunately for Tokyo and its citizens, Takehito Takano and his group at
Change management
Postmodern Public Health
Public health challenges are complex, programmatic and context dependent, and so are the interventions required to address them and the research methods sufficient to the task of throwing light on the most effective solutions. It has been said that practitioners and researchers should first of all define the problem and then make
Research for Practical Public Health
In this issue there is a predominantly research flavour, but it is one that increasingly is drawing us to look at what we can really do about inequalities in health. We have long believed that if the adage that “it's the demography, stupid!” is one of the imperatives of public health, shelter and housing runs a close second. An editorial from New Zealand, linked to a paper from Canada, explores housing and inequalities in health from a broad soci…
Social medicine
Developing theories and methods for practice
In this issue we carry a number of convergent papers on Theory and Methods that will contribute to the debate about “fit for purpose” academic support for practice. From the United States, Dr Roux provides a comprehensive glossary of terms for the increasingly important multilevel analysis, while Wardle and colleagues explore the use of a home affluence scale as an alternative means of assessing socioeconomic status in adolescence. See pages 588,…
On elephants and prevention 1
There is a story of two men travelling on a train through Africa. One of them is throwing powder out of the window. His
Elephant number 3
It is said that the thing about eating an elephant is that it doesn’t much matter where you start, the important thing is to know that it is indeed an elephant and that you have some sense of its
Debate, Dialogue, Stimulation
In this issue we have plenty to stimulate and arouse discussion. In six editorials, we range between the tantalising finding of a causal association between suicide rates and the political complexion of government and the complexity of public health issues relating to molecular epidemiology and environmental cancer. See pages 722–731 Our gallery focuses on traditional healers in the Americas, and reminds us that part of the legacy of the colonial…
Medicine (61 works) · Public health (28 works) · Law (19 works) · Nursing (19 works) · Environmental health (15 works) · Pathology (14 works) · Global Public Health Policies and Epidemiology (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Gerontology (11 works) · Gerontology (11 works)