SICK SOCIETY

ABOUT THE BOOK

As we recover through the reality of a global pandemic, we face into a severe cost of living crisis. We live in a time of great uncertainty. More people are being pushed into poverty. The gap between the richest and poorest is growing wider. We are, perhaps, more divided than we have ever been. Our public services are overwhelmed. Citizens are fed up. Our society is sick.

What can we do? We must allow ourselves to feel the pain of our reality, be outraged, challenge the inevitability of the status quo and create moral alternative economies of a reimagined future. We must examine the core values which shape our politics and find an altogether more collaborative and participatory experience of being community.

Drawing on the stories of people he has met in his consulting room, over the last 18 years, Dr Andy Knox, a GP and population health leader, explores why things are going so wrong for communities across the UK and what we might do to bring about change. He draws on a variety of disciplines to uncover the societal injustices which many people experience every day. The experiences of poverty, hunger, racism and disability are a painful reality of life for so many people across the UK. We are taken on an uncomfortable journey to discover why this is the case.

We explore big themes like power, education, freedom and privilege, using different lenses to shine a light on them. And importantly, we find hope that things can be different. Knox argues that until we learn to reorientate ourselves towards the way of love, we will continue to perpetuate the staggering inequalities at work in our communities.

SICK SOCIETY is calling for a kinder society, that actually works for everyone and gets to the pragmatics of how we do this.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andy Knox is a husband, a dad, a son, a brother and a friend. He is also a GP Partner at Ash Trees Surgery in Carnforth, Associate Medical Director of the Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB – focused on Population Health and Health Inequity; Population Health Associate at The King’s Fund; Associate at the Centre for Population Health, Honorary Senior Lecturer at Lancaster University in Sociology and Health. He’s an author, a blogger, a member of the NHS Assembly; part of the Poverty Truth Commission, executive coach, a facilitator, art of hosting practitioner, and general enthusiast. Andy is a member of the Royal College of General Practitioners and the Faculty of Public Health.

He is usually heard before he is seen due to his ridiculously loud laugh and can often be found singing, whilst walking with his Springer Spaniel Lola, around the glory that is Morecambe Bay. He relaxes by playing the piano, reading books, cooking good food and being in and around water. He was recently awarded an MBE in the King’s first Birthday Honours List for services to Primary Care and tackling Health Inequalities. His claim to fame is that his Grandpa invented Fairy Liquid and his cousin won the Great British Bake Off!