https://www.sarahdawoodwrites.comRSS Feed for Sarah DawoodenFri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.hsj.co.uk/health-inequalities/tackling-health-inequalities-through-people-led-projects/7041044.articleNovartis Pharmaceuticals UK Ltd has provided sponsorship funding for this non-promotional piece. Novartis has had no input into the content, aside from agreement on the topic (tackling health inequalities through people-led projects). Grassroots initiatives created in collaboration with communities can help to reduce unfair disparities in health outcomes Being healthy is not entirely within our control. Health inequalities – the preventable and unjust differences in health outcomes that arise be...Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.hsj.co.uk/health-inequalities/tackling-health-inequalities-through-people-led-projects/7041044.articlehttps://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/content/features/let-the-light-in-supporting-workers-through-baby-lossWhat kinds of support should employers offer to workers who suffer the loss of a baby? Losing a baby is a traumatic experience. But having an unsupportive workplace can make the experience even harder. An estimated one in four pregnancies in the UK ends in a loss, according to the pregnancy research charity Tommy’s. Yet nearly half (45%) of UK employers do not provide adequate support, the CIPD’s 2025 Health and Wellbeing at Work survey suggests. Legal rights are improving though....Wed, 18 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/content/features/let-the-light-in-supporting-workers-through-baby-losshttps://www.raconteur.net/talent-culture/how-to-prepare-a-policy-for-menopause-supportThe employment rights bill is expected to become law by the end of this year, and will usher in a raft of changes to improve working conditions. Tackling gender inequality is a key tenet – businesses of 250 employees or more will be required to publish ‘equality action plans’, first voluntarily from April 2026, then mandatorily from 2027.  Alongside demonstrating how the business aims to reduce its gender pay gap, equality action plans must include support for menopausal employees. A majority...Fri, 21 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://www.raconteur.net/talent-culture/how-to-prepare-a-policy-for-menopause-supporthttps://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/healthcare/2025/10/dying-with-dignityWalking around the leafy grounds of St Raphael’s Hospice in Sutton, south London, on a sunny day feels incredibly tranquil. All on ground level, several buildings offer a range of services that move far beyond the realms of clinical care. An in-patients section with 13 private rooms feels like the much calmer cousin of a small hospital ward, without the trolleys in corridors and panicked bustling. Rooms for outpatient appointments service those in better health, and a lavender-scented reflection...Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/healthcare/2025/10/dying-with-dignityhttps://www.indexoncensorship.org/2025/07/attacked-all-fronts-west-bank-diala-ayesh-human-rights-lawyer-palestine/When Diala Ayesh was arrested last year, her first thought wasn’t for her own safety – it was whether anyone would inform her loved ones of her whereabouts. “Even though there was nothing against me, as Palestinians we always expect to leave home and not return,” she told Index. On 17 January 2024, Ayesh was travelling north from Hebron to Ramallah via public transport when the vehicle was stopped by Israeli forces at Wadi a-Nar – a military checkpoint...Thu, 24 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0100https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2025/07/attacked-all-fronts-west-bank-diala-ayesh-human-rights-lawyer-palestine/https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2025/06/eu-losing-patience-hungary-viktor-orban-anti-lgbtq-laws-european-commission/The European Convention on Human Rights was set up in the aftermath of World War Two to protect the rights of people in the Council of Europe’s 47 member states. Enshrined within it are fundamental obligations around free speech, including the right to free expression and the right to protest. It was intended to act as a blueprint for...Mon, 02 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0100https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2025/06/eu-losing-patience-hungary-viktor-orban-anti-lgbtq-laws-european-commission/https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2025/04/left-speechless-trauma-leaving-children-gaza-unable-communicate/This article first appeared in Volume 54, Issue 1 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled The forgotten patients: Lost voices in the global healthcare system, published on 11 April 2025. Read more about the issue here. Most children say their first word between the ages of 12 and 18 months. But Fatehy, a Palestinian boy living in Jabalia City in Gaza, is four years old and is still barely talking. When he does speak, he says the same words over and over again – “scared”, “bomb” and “...Tue, 29 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0100https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2025/04/left-speechless-trauma-leaving-children-gaza-unable-communicate/https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2025/04/trade-wars-become-culture-wars-uk-keir-starmer-usa-hate-speech-laws/The repercussions of Donald Trump’s tariffs continue to spiral with the escalating US-China trade war and the World Trade Organization warning of an impending sharp decline in global trade. But perhaps even more concerning is how the USA’s threats of taxation are increasingly being used to coax significant societal policy changes out of other governments. Talks have intensified between the UK and US governments around tariffs, with US Vice President JD Vance reportedly putting pressure on UK Pri...Thu, 24 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0100https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2025/04/trade-wars-become-culture-wars-uk-keir-starmer-usa-hate-speech-laws/https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2025/03/trumps-usaid-cuts-existential-threat-international-aid-consular-assistance-uk/It would have been difficult to miss the recent flurry of news regarding cuts to international aid organisations, and the repercussions these will have in areas such as climate change mitigation, tackling gender-based violence, and supporting independent journalism in countries with severe free speech violations. Donald Trump’s cuts to USAID (the US Agency for International Development) will decimate such assistance, with more than 90% of the agency’s foreign aid contracts due to be eliminated....Mon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2025/03/trumps-usaid-cuts-existential-threat-international-aid-consular-assistance-uk/https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2025/02/donald-trump-volodymr-zelenskyy-war-truth-disinformation/The news this week has been dominated by the growing feud between Donald Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which has culminated in possibly irreparable relations between the presidents. What started with a meeting between Trump and Vladimir Putin on the war in Ukraine (from which Zelenskyy was excluded) ended in a stream of disinformation coming from the leader of the world’s largest economy. Trump made several spurious claims chiming with those regularly churned out by Putin’s...Mon, 24 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2025/02/donald-trump-volodymr-zelenskyy-war-truth-disinformation/https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2025/02/afghanistan-taliban-music-banned-musicians-exile-silent/This article first appeared in Volume 53, Issue 4 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled Unsung Heroes: How musicians are raising their voices against oppression. Read more about the issue here. The issue was published on 12 December 2024. When the Taliban seized power in Kabul in August 2021, they soon began searching people’s homes for items they deemed to be immoral. Waheedullah Saghar, the head of the music department at Kabul University, had to destroy all of his musical instru...Thu, 06 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2025/02/afghanistan-taliban-music-banned-musicians-exile-silent/https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2024/12/its-been-quite-the-year-for-freedom-of-expression/Hello, readers. This will be our final newsletter before Index wraps up for the holiday season. It’s been quite the year for freedom of expression, and whilst it’s not easy to summarise in one email, we’ve had a go. We’ve seen severe violations by repressive governments – but we’ve also seen remarkable acts of defiance by political activists, journalists and protesters. These acts of defiance leave room for hope. In Russia, the year started with the suspicious death of Alexei Navalny whilst in d...Thu, 19 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2024/12/its-been-quite-the-year-for-freedom-of-expression/https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2024/12/will-syrias-future-leaders-restore-human-rights-for-all/Syrian rebels gather around an equestrian statue of Bassel al-Assad, brother of deposed leader Bashar, during the 2024 Battle of Aleppo. The statue was later torn down. Photo by VOAHello, readers. This week, the world watched in shock as Bashar al-Assad’s government was toppled by Syrian rebels, bringing the dictator’s 24-year-reign to a close and suddenly ending the country’s brutal 13-year civil war. He and his family have since fled, and allegedly claimed asylum in Russia. One of the defining...Fri, 13 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2024/12/will-syrias-future-leaders-restore-human-rights-for-all/https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2024/12/the-power-of-protest/Protests have the power to rally people, express objection to political decisions, and in the most successful cases, elicit change. They are a fundamental form of self expression, and a crucial mechanism of any democracy. This week, we saw South Koreans take to the streets to protest President Yoon Suk Yeol’s shock move to impose martial law, which temporarily placed the military in charge and suspended many civilian rights, including the right to protest. The move was immediately declared illeg...Fri, 06 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2024/12/the-power-of-protest/https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2024/11/the-uk-government-must-defend-its-citizens-around-the-world/Hello, readers. This week, the news in the UK has been dominated by the Budget, alongside anticipation of next week’s USA presidential election. Whilst a lot of media attention has been focused on the Chancellor’s number crunching, the Prime Minister also started the week with a proclamation of the importance of press freedom. Writing for The Guardian on Monday, in an article coinciding with the News Media Association’s week-long Journalism Matters campaign, Keir Starmer vowed to protect journal...Fri, 01 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2024/11/the-uk-government-must-defend-its-citizens-around-the-world/https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2024/10/film-censorship-risks-emboldening-those-who-threaten-violence/For more than 20 years, Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s classic novel, A Clockwork Orange, was banned from cinemas in the UK. Kubrick was known for his shocking and crass, but altogether original, forays into directing. His interpretation of Burgess’s novel was considered exceptionally scandalous for its depictions of sexual and physical violence. But it wasn’t public outrage that triggered its banning – the director himself pulled the film from circulation in 1973, over concer...Fri, 25 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0100https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2024/10/film-censorship-risks-emboldening-those-who-threaten-violence/https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2024/10/journalists-have-a-right-to-life/Hello, readers. This is Sarah Dawood here, editor of Index on Censorship. Every week, we bring the most pertinent global free speech stories to your inbox. I must confess that today’s newsletter is very bleak, so I won’t be offended if you click away in search of a more optimistic end to your week. We’re reflecting on how journalists are increasingly being silenced globally, not only with the threat of legal retribution or imprisonment, but with death – often with little or no repercussions for...Fri, 18 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0100https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2024/10/journalists-have-a-right-to-life/https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2024/10/all-the-news-thats-fake-to-print/Hello, readers. This is Sarah Dawood here, the new editor of Index on Censorship. Every week, we bring the most pertinent global free speech stories to your inbox. This week, headlines have been dominated by the ongoing devastation of the war in the Middle East, where the death toll is now more than 42,000 in Gaza, and more than 2,100 in Lebanon. Monday also marked a painful milestone for Israelis and Jewish people everywhere, as the first anniversary of Hamas’s attacks, which killed 1,200 peopl...Fri, 11 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0100https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2024/10/all-the-news-thats-fake-to-print/https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2024/10/telling-fact-from-fiction/If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? This well-known philosophical question most likely stems from the work of 18th century philosopher George Berkeley, who questioned the possibility of “unperceived existence”. In other words – did something really happen if no one is around to witness or perceive it? This might seem a lofty and pretentious way to start this week’s Index newsletter. But the first-hand observance and subsequent documentation of even...Fri, 04 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0100https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2024/10/telling-fact-from-fiction/https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/healthcare/nhs/2024/08/nhs-digital-transformation-infrastructure-technology-patient-records-artificial-intelligence-waiting-listsThree months ago, a doctor at my GP surgery referred me for a blood test, but the form is still gathering dust on my bedside table. Since June, my local hospital has not been able to conduct any routine blood tests following a major Russian cyberattack on their pathology service provider Synnovis, bringing many diagnostic services to a standstill.  This huge ransomware attack will have a significant impact on the patient backlog, given seven London hospitals rely on Synnovis. Hospitals have b...Fri, 23 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0100https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/healthcare/nhs/2024/08/nhs-digital-transformation-infrastructure-technology-patient-records-artificial-intelligence-waiting-listshttps://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/healthcare/nhs/2024/08/nhs-digital-transformation-infrastructure-technology-patient-records-artificial-intelligence-waiting-listsThree months ago, a doctor at my GP surgery referred me for a blood test, but the form is still gathering dust on my bedside table. Since June, my local hospital has not been able to conduct any routine blood tests following a major Russian cyberattack on their pathology service provider Synnovis, bringing many diagnostic services to a standstill.  This huge ransomware attack will have a significant impact on the patient backlog, given seven London hospitals rely on Synnovis. Hospitals have b...Fri, 23 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0100https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/healthcare/nhs/2024/08/nhs-digital-transformation-infrastructure-technology-patient-records-artificial-intelligence-waiting-listshttps://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/healthcare/nhs/2024/06/craig-ritchie-dementia-alzheimers-brain-neurology-mental-health-psychiatrist-prevention-sicknessAs political parties push on with their election campaigns, grand promises are being made about tackling sky-high NHS waiting lists. If elected, Keir Starmer has promised to deliver 40,000 extra appointments, scans and operations a week to get non-urgent waits down to the 18-week target, while Rishi Sunak has pledged to boost the number of GP appointments and increase the scope of pharmacists to treat more common conditions. There are currently 7.5 million cases of people waiting for elective (nFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0100https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/healthcare/nhs/2024/06/craig-ritchie-dementia-alzheimers-brain-neurology-mental-health-psychiatrist-prevention-sicknesshttps://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/healthcare/nhs/2024/03/nhs-digital-transformation-patient-records-ai-chancellor-jeremy-hunt-budgetIn his Budget last week, the Chancellor vowed to transform the NHS digitally. Jeremy Hunt pledged £3.4bn towards boosting the health service’s productivity, particularly through “harnessing new technology” such as artificial intelligence (AI) to reduce admin and speed up diagnoses. This feels like déjà vu – the government has promised this grand transformation before, yet the NHS remains woefully behind on its digital proficiency. Ten years ago, when Hunt was health secretary, he promised to maMon, 11 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/healthcare/nhs/2024/03/nhs-digital-transformation-patient-records-ai-chancellor-jeremy-hunt-budgethttps://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/healthcare/public-health/2024/03/ultra-processed-food-healthy-eating-unhealthy-disease-mental-physicalIn the 1930s and 1940s, tobacco companies battled it out via advertising to be known as the “healthiest” cigarette brands. Adverts featured illustrations of smiling doctors clutching their favourite packets, with notorious campaigns reassuring the public that “More doctors smoke Camels”. Some of these ads even appeared in medical journals. Now we know the catastrophic health implications of smoking, restrictions on tobacco products have increased dramatically over recent decades. It’s illegal tThu, 07 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/healthcare/public-health/2024/03/ultra-processed-food-healthy-eating-unhealthy-disease-mental-physicalhttps://www.newstatesman.com/encounter/2024/02/esther-ghey-the-internet-unleashed-horrific-thingsWhen Esther Ghey walked through the door of a huge co-working space on the seventh floor of Television Centre, the former home of the BBC in White City, London, she smiled with a hint of tiredness. Ghey has faced an overwhelming amount of media attention in the year since the death of her daughter, Brianna. As she sat down on the sofa across from me, coffee in hand, I noticed the tattoos that travel up her arm – a homage to her child. “I have some bad days,” Ghey, who is 37 and dressed in a smaWed, 21 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://www.newstatesman.com/encounter/2024/02/esther-ghey-the-internet-unleashed-horrific-thingshttps://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/economic-growth/skills/2024/02/seema-malhotra-shadow-skills-minister-interview-apprenticeships-universitiesThe shadow skills minister Seema Malhotra first stood for the Labour Party in 1983, when she was 11 years old. As a candidate in her primary school council elections, inspired by her grandmother and four siblings, she pledged better pensions and more public facilities for children. She didn’t win, but she did come second. At the age of 15, Malhotra gave her second major polemic. Asked by her English teacher to write about something that “wound [her] up”, she chose Margaret Thatcher. Not much laMon, 05 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/economic-growth/skills/2024/02/seema-malhotra-shadow-skills-minister-interview-apprenticeships-universitieshttps://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/healthcare/public-health/2024/01/labour-child-health-plan-mental-dentistry-obesity-smoking-vaping-junk-food-advertisingThis month, Labour released a Child Health Action Plan, which lays out how it would improve young people’s health and well-being if the party wins the next general election. The plan has seven proposals centred around cutting NHS waiting lists, improving mental health support, widening access to NHS dentistry, tackling smoking and vaping, banning junk food advertising aimed at children, introducing free healthy breakfast clubs in every primary school, and protecting children from infectious diseFri, 26 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/healthcare/public-health/2024/01/labour-child-health-plan-mental-dentistry-obesity-smoking-vaping-junk-food-advertisinghttps://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/healthcare/public-health/2024/01/parkrun-founder-running-parks-public-health-exercise-healthy-activeIt’s January, it’s cold outside, and yet this weekend around 200,000 people across the country will brave the freeze and head to their local park for a group 5-kilometre run. Better known as Parkrun, the initiative started in 2004 as a small running club for a group of friends in Bushy Park, west London, who would jog and then go for coffee. Now it has spread around the world, taking place every weekend in 2,500 locations globally, including 1,236 in the UK. Today, Parkrun may be a “public heaMon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/healthcare/public-health/2024/01/parkrun-founder-running-parks-public-health-exercise-healthy-activehttps://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/healthcare/nhs/2023/12/councillors-polling-conservatives-nhs-services-worse-public-health-prevention-fundingAs NHS waiting lists grow and staff shortages persist, it’s become general knowledge that the impact of austerity and cuts to public services have pushed the UK’s healthcare system to breaking point. But exclusive polling of England’s councillors conducted by New Statesman Spotlight* reveals that it’s not just the government’s opponents who think this. Overall, more than four fifths (86.4 per cent) of all councillors surveyed said that the state of health and social care was “worse” or “much woTue, 19 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/healthcare/nhs/2023/12/councillors-polling-conservatives-nhs-services-worse-public-health-prevention-fundinghttps://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/tech-regulation/emerging-technologies/2023/11/labour-tech-policy-artificial-intelligence-innovation-regulationThe government spent months trailing its AI summit – the UK’s assertion of its relevance to the global debate on how to regulate the technology of the moment. But the resounding image from this month’s meeting was of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak interviewing Elon Musk. With a series of softball questions, Sunak and the richest man in the world had a quasi-philosophical discussion about how AI could make humans obsolete. And yet, despite the existential concerns over artificial intelligence, the PTue, 28 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/tech-regulation/emerging-technologies/2023/11/labour-tech-policy-artificial-intelligence-innovation-regulation