Big Issues in a Wee Place: Access to Health Care on Edinburgh’s Leith Walk

• In Event: (Re)generating Dialogues between STS and Bioethics

Abstract

This paper draws from a work-based placement project that was undertaken with the
People’s Health Movement (PHM) in conjunction with NHS (National Health Service)
Lothian, focusing on the role of community pharmacies in improving access to health care by
looking at an initiative being rolled out in the Leith Walk area of Edinburgh. This initiative is
the result of recent legislation by the Scottish government that integrated health care and social
care, requiring collaboration among various parts of the system, and simultaneously addresses a
local problem of overcrowded surgeries and a lack of GPs in the context of an unsustainable
health system as well as a broader context of precarious economic and political futures for the
NHS and the broader world.
The paper considers accessibility to health care in an anthropological way, including by
reflexively thinking of its own role in addressing the question. I draw upon my experiences in
the placement, anthropological training and critical discussions to offer ways of rethinking the
problem. I conclude with solutions revolving around further need for collaborative,
ethnographic methods to address these big issues with particular problems in a specific, “wee”
places.

Author

• Johanna Hemminger, Independent Researcher