Dame Carol Black on public health

The Life Scientific

BBC

Technology, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 6 October 2015

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Carol Black was an overweight child who, aged 13, put herself on a diet. Now, as an expert advisor to the government, she's the woman behind recent newspaper headlines suggesting that obese people who refuse treatment could see their benefits cut. In the last decade, Carol has conducted several reviews on work and health, sickness absence and how best to help people with obesity, alcohol and drug problems get back into the workplace. In 2008 she suggested the Sick Note should be replaced with a Fit Note which states what people can do rather than what they can't. Later she recommended that an independent assessor should decide who is, or is not, Fit for Work. Dame Carol Black talks to Jim Al-Khalili about the challenges associated with advising government on these controversial issues; and how, despite relative adversity and several bad decisions, she achieved such a position of power and influence. Producer: Anna Buckley.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Life Scientific.
0:03.6	First broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
0:06.3	I'm Jim Alleili and my mission is to interview the most
0:09.6	fascinating and important scientists alive today and to find out what makes them tick.
0:16.0	Carol Black was an overweight child who at the age of 13 decided to put herself on a diet.
0:22.0	Today she's the expert government advisor
0:25.1	behind recent newspaper headlines suggesting that obese people who refuse treatment
0:30.0	could see their benefits cut. She has the ear of both the Department of Health
0:34.0	and the Department of Work and Pensions and is the author of several landmark
0:38.2	reviews on work and health, sickness absence and most recently how best to help people with obesity
0:44.8	alcohol and drug problems get back into the workplace. As the national
0:49.6	expert on scleroderma a skin and tissue autoimmune disease, she's transformed the care of people
0:55.7	with this miserable and sometimes life-threatening condition. She was the second ever woman to become
1:00.8	president of the Royal College of Physicians and in 2005 was made a dame for
1:05.6	her services to medicine.
1:07.1	So Dame Carol Black, welcome to the Life Scientific.
1:10.1	I'm very pleased to be here.
1:12.0	Now from a position of relative adversity, Carol Black, your long journey to power and influence certainly,
1:19.6	it hasn't been an easy one, has it?
1:21.6	No, it hasn't, and it's been quite a slow one I mean it
1:24.8	took me a long while to understand if you like the capabilities I had and the things
1:30.4	I could do I don't know whether I would call myself a slow developer.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.