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Ben Barr

@benjaminbarr.bsky.social
2K followers 2.1K following 292 posts

Professor in Applied Public Health Research. Head WHO collaborating centre for policy research on the determinants of health equity. www.liverpool.ac.uk/population-heal… . Was once an anthropologist, maybe I still am.

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Reposted by Ben Barr
Jenna Norton @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
"Because policy shapes health, research on policy is health research." Great article from some giants in the fields of public health, social epidemiology, and health policy research: www.healthaffairs.org/content/fore...
healthaffairs.org
Policy Research At The National Institutes Of Health: An Imperative In Peril | Health Affairs Forefront
Understanding the health consequences of policy is not peripheral to NIH’s mission. It is central to it.
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Health Inequalities Policy Research Group @livunihipr.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Inaugural Lecture Professor Ben Barr @benjaminbarr.bsky.social The Epidemiology of Money How money - and what governments do with it - shapes health and health inequalities 08 Oct 2026; 5.30-7pm BST, Central Teaching Hub; University of Liverpool free to attend register online: tinyurl.com/3djwvpjx
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Helen Barnard @helenbarnard.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
It was great to be able to give a couple of quick thoughts on Good Morning Britain this morning about the new social security plans announced by the the Conservatives. Here's an article with a slightly longer version of my view on this: lnkd.in/eP6RwEc5
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Ben Barr @benjaminbarr.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
This would also allow better integration with the NHS - which is badly needed.
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Re:State @re-state.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
🚨NEW REPORT: 'No Job for the Centre: the case for devolving employment support'🚨 Jobcentre Plus is a centrally-controlled, one-size-fits-all institution which is incoherent in the context of English devolution. Our new report argues that it should be scrapped.
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Re:State @re-state.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The report argues for a new model: ♦️Mayors take on responsibility for in-person joined-up local support ♦️A national digital offer for those likely to find work quickly ♦️Mayors keep a share of the savings when they cut the benefit caseload Full paper: re-state.co.uk/publications...
re-state.co.uk
No Job for the Centre: the case for devolving employment support - Re:State
Britain’s employment support system is failing the people who need it most. Its backbone – Jobcentre Plus – remains a highly centralised, one-size-fits-all institution, despite the importance of local...
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Health Nerd @gidmk.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The risk difference caused by wearing masks to a bar - a place where people eat, drink, and, uh, make merry - is extremely small. I would not be surprised if the benefit was genuinely too small to measure outside of perhaps the height of flu season.
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Paul Belcher FRCP HonMFPH 🇪🇺🇬🇧 @pauljbelcher.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
🇬🇧🇪🇺🇨🇦 #UK should 'team up' with #Canada in new #Europe alliance, Canadian minister tells BBC "The world has changed. America has changed. So we need to change." www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
UK should 'team up' with Canada in new Europe alliance, Canadian minister says
It comes after European Commission President proposed "opening the door" for Canada to become an associate member of the EU.
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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
‘The report is expected to say that there is no direct evidence of widespread overdiagnosis of autism and ADHD in Britain’ Preview of what is expected in the independent review led by @britishacademy.bsky.social Fellow Peter Fonagy liveapp.inews.co.uk/category/476...
liveapp.inews.co.uk
ADHD is not being overdiagnosed, major Government report set to find
Landmark report expected to rule out mass overdiagnosis but warn support can be hard to obtain
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Owen Winter @owenwntr.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Great case of "land doesn't vote, people do" in Sweden
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Ben Barr @benjaminbarr.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
www.ticketsource.com/university-o...
INAUGURAL LECTURE
 Professor Ben Barr
Professor in Applied Public Health Research
Head, WHO Collaborating Centre for Policy Research on Determinants of Health Equity
The Epidemiology of Money
How money — and what governments do with it — shapes health and health inequalities.

Professor Ben Barr is Professor of Applied Public Health in the Department of Public Health, Policy and Systems at the University of Liverpool, and Head of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Policy Research on Determinants of Health Equity.
The health divide blights this country. But it is not inevitable — it's driven by policy choices. Across his career in public health, Professor Barr has sought to understand the health inequalities consequences of different strategies for public investment in services and households, and how those strategies could be improved.
In this lecture, drawing on two decades of research, Professor Barr will explore how decisions about the allocation of public money - to people and to places - have shaped the pattern of health we see today, and what this means for building a welfare state fit for the future.





Thursday 8th October 2026
17:30 – 19:00 · Lecture followed by an informal drinks reception
Central Teaching Hub - Lecture Theatre C, University of Liverpool, L69 7BX
Tickets are free, via Ticketsource
INSTITUTE OF POPULATION HEALTH
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Institute of Alcohol Studies @ias.org.uk · 14/09/2026
What kind of evidence changes public health policy? New research from Alice Fabbri, @brittakm.bsky.social, Katherine Smith: effective regulation of alcohol, tobacco and unhealthy food requires an "evidence jigsaw" of epidemiology, modelling, lived experience, public opinion & policy evaluation...
bmjpublichealth.bmj.com
https://bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/4/3/e005272
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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 12/09/2026
A trans man in the UK has been banned in the workplace restrooms after he was forced to use the women's restrooms to comply with the new EHRC guidance. The women complained because he is visibly male and so they told him he can't use any bathroom.
A screenshot of a Reddit post from the r/LegalAdviceUK subreddit by user Dijstraanon, titled "FtM transgender facing two different issues at work? England."
The post text reads:
"Brother in law is trans FtM and presents fully as a man. He's now facing an impossible situation at work with his employer telling him that due to recent legislation he must use the toilet of his birth gender. BUT several female colleagues have raised a grievance about him using their gendered toilet.
His employer has told him that he cannot use the toilet while he is at work until they sort it out and cannot give him a timeframe to do so. They do [cut off] have disabled separate toilets.
In the mean time one of his female colleagues has accused him of sexual harassment because he was used their gendered toilet. His menstrual cycle meant he needed to use the toilet.
He's been with the employer for just over 5 years but only in this location for 18 months. The location is mainly male with just a handful of females, and his workshop only has male toilets.
I do not know how to support him and as he's not in a union there is no one to turn too right now."
The post has an orange "Comments Moderated" tag, 169 upvotes, and 134 comments.
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Patrick Ness @patricknessbooks.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
I ran a marathon to raise money for MSF. Attacks on MSF and RNLI and Amnesty are what fascists literally do. They want to devalue all humane effort, all care for fellow man. These are dangerous, dangerous times.
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Ben Barr @benjaminbarr.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Between 1/9/2002 and 2/1/2011 I think according to the website.
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Owen Garling @ojgarling.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Mesmerising.
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MꙬse Allain @mooseallain.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
A man in a face covering talks to another man who is looking disappointedly at a small box he is holding. Man 1 “What's that?”. Man 2 “Baklava. I misread the WhatsApp”
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Ben Barr @benjaminbarr.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Put social care into a national care service and get rid of upper tier in two tier areas. Just an idea.
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Ben Barr @benjaminbarr.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
1. Single tier makes sense 2. but Can't see how great cities and towns like Preston and Chorley benefit from being subsumed into North / South Lancashire councils or how that's good for local democracy.
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Jane @localnotail.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Thank you RNLI
act.38degrees.org.uk
An open letter in support of the volunteers and staff at the RNLI
This is a disgrace. Brave RNLI volunteers being called scum for risking their lives to save others at sea is just plain wrong. So I've signed an open letter of thanks for the RNLI letting them know th...
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
New PISA data out England is now top ten in all three areas (reading, maths, science) and the second highest performing country outside of east Asia (after Estonia). This is a huge public policy success.
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
One reason England does so well is our second generation immigrants outperform their peers which is not true in most OECD countries. We are also very good at integration. And it's v sad that this is never acknowledge in debates on immigration.
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Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
90 years ago, Parliament responded to the rise of Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts by passing the Public Order Act, which banned political uniforms, private militias and the threat of force for political objects. The debates make very resonant reading today. Here's the Liberal Robert Bernays. (Short 🧵)
You cannot conduct a fair match when one side is playing with a ball and the other with bombs and, if democracy is to survive, it must be conducted according to definite and recognised rule. One of them is that no political party should resort to any weapon other than reason and argument. The introduction of private armies, as I see it, strikes at the root of democracy. I know it is contended that the Blackshirts are not armed and, therefore, are not an army, but I do not think that argument can be upheld. … Uniformed men in military formation suggest, and are meant to suggest, the idea of force. It is no argument to reply that at this or that demonstration no force is intended. It is an inescapable fact that a uniform in politics symbolises force, to be used either now or in the future.
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Nicolas Lambert @neocarto.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Parametrized Equal Earth Projection observablehq.com/@fil/paramet...
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Andi Fugard @andifugard.info · 06/09/2026
In another episode of, I wonder how well just regressing outcome on intervention group and baseline will do...? Here's a scenario which breaks the diff-in-diffs parallel trends assumption using regression to the mean. Baseline-adjusted regression survives. andifugard.info/diff-in-diff...
The true effect is 0.15. Diff-in-diffs gets 0.37 because it doesn't adjust for regression to the mean. Baseline-adjusted regression gets 0.13.
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womensartbluesky.bsky.social @womensartbluesky.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
1659 painting by Elisabetta Sirani depicting Timocleia of Thebes pushing the Thracian captain who raped her into a well #womensart
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 05/09/2026
‘Guilt by association’: why seven international aid workers were killed in Israeli airstrike
theguardian.com
‘Guilt by association’: why seven international aid workers were killed in Israeli airstrike
Exclusive: Guardian investigation reveals targeting of World Central Kitchen convoy was result of widely used military tactic • Death on the road to Rafah: the night the IDF targeted World Central Kitchen aid workers Seven aid workers killed in an airstrike in Gaza were marked as targets under an Israeli military practice of establishing guilt by association, a Guardian investigation shows. A top Israeli military prosecutor announced last month that he would not pursue criminal proceedings for the April 2024 incident in which drones fired missiles at three clearly marked World Central Kitchen (WCK) cars soon after they had escorted a food aid delivery to Gaza. Three British humanitarian workers along with an Australian, a Palestinian, a Pole and a dual US-Canadian national were killed. Continue reading...
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🇬🇾🗽Sydette The Dreaded Gorgon🗽🇬🇾 @blackamazon.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Black and trans women TOLD EVERYONE THIS WAS WHAT THEY WERE GOING FOR THEY TOLD YOU
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Tom Cox @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
THREAD. A while ago my parents' cat Bridget went missing. As the worrying weeks dragged on my dad devised a way to distract himself: he began to paint Bridget's adventures, imagining her travelling through time & inhabiting art's most iconic scenes. What he produced (& how quickly) was phenomenal...
The Girl With The Cat Earring, featuring my mum and dad's cat Bridget.Bridget hangs out with Pieter Bruegel the Elder's The Hunters In The Snow
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leon @leyawn.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
post by leyawn

jester, roast this peasant child for saying i have no clothes on. more vulgar, jester. use the forbidden words
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Thomas House @tah-sci.com · 24/08/2026
New Preprint! "A framework for combined epidemiological-genomic inference to improve estimation of household model parameters" with @joebhilton.bsky.social and Golsa Sayyar. We extend the state space of standard household models to combine genomics with epidemiology. arxiv.org/abs/2608.21094
arxiv.org
A framework for combined epidemiological-genomic inference to improve estimation of household model parameters
Models incorporating household structure, with different rates of transmission within and between households, are widely used in infectious disease epidemiology. These models can be calibrated using f...
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Qusay Noor @qusaynoor.net · 24/08/2026
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Ben Barr @benjaminbarr.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Doesn't @billybragg.bsky.social have it??
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public health guy @publichealthguy1.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
they say a picture's worth a thousand words, but you could probably write a dissertation on this one
a few nazi fucks getting their white cross slammed down on them by a person dressed as spiderman and some other guys. there's a crumpled american flag in the background and blue and red [posters partially visible about freedom of speech is about —  the nazis are cosplaying in tactical gear from temu. the scene may be described as chaotic
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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 21/08/2026
As a percentage of total employment, since 1948 when the data starts, Central government employment is today the highest on record. Local government employment is today the lowest on record. Some context for Andy Burnham's promise to try and reverse this trend.
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David Buck @davidjbuck.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Will the new prime minister and secretary of state remember their own #history on #healthinequalities #policy? and what will happen if they do? A post on linked in www.linkedin.com/pulse/prime-...
linkedin.com
Will the prime minister and secretary of stare remember their own history on health inequalities policy? If so, how will they act on them?
Remarkably, the former Secretary of State for health and the former public health minister are now Prime Minister and Secretary of State for health respectively. They say a week is a long-time in poli...
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Health Inequalities Policy Research Group @livunihipr.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Great News: Liverpool is a UNICEF Child Friendly City liverpoolexpress.co.uk/liverpool-is...
liverpoolexpress.co.uk
Liverpool is a UNICEF Child Friendly City - Liverpool Express
Liverpool has achieved international recognition as a UNICEF Child Friendly City.
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Alex Andreou @sturdyalex.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
There is a danger that by arguing the amount, we end up conceding the framing. Britain's welfare is ungenerous, the spend in total is mid-to-low table, and below past peaks. Benefits need reforming because they're unfit for purpose and trap, instead of enabling people. Not to make fantasy savings.
Chart of UK overall benefit spend, showing it lower than post-GFC or pandemic and largely in similar proportions, pensions being the largest chunk by far.Charts showing the UK is mid-table of comparative OECD countris on total social expenditure and bottom third in terms of cash benefits.Charts showing that the UK has the lowest welfare income replacement rate (ie. how far one's income drops if they lose their job) of any comparator OECD country, and third lowest, if you add housing benefit (which is more than the cash benefit element).Graph showing that the generosity of the UK's welfare spending has been declining over decades against trend.
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alexvonwitzleben.bsky.social @alexvonwitzleben.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Many Americans still believe that Europe is unsafe and the US is the greatest country, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. #DonaldTrump #FakeNews #Maga #Republicans #FarRight #AfD
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Ben Barr @benjaminbarr.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
If you want something on global perspective and anthropological study of witchcraft this is a classic text ( or at least was when I was studying at University some time ago) www.goodreads.com/en/book/show...
goodreads.com
Witchcraft and Sorcery: Selected Readings
Dr. Marwick's collection of readings paints a fascinati…
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Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
If true, we get 3 things. None good. 1. The direct negative growth/fiscal impacts of cutting immigration. 2. A Chancellor who prioritises their own personal/ideological obsessions over the UK economy. 3. A PM who through myopia or weakness chooses 1 and 2.
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Clive Lewis MP @labourlewis.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
1/4 Across the country - and increasingly across Parliament - concern is growing about the Government's reliance on Palantir for public sector contracts.
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Ben Barr @benjaminbarr.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Our evil overlords - changing the world through gradual democratic processes.
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 12/07/2026
My coauthor Jay Falk's postdoctoral fellowship was terminated by the Trump administration for documenting the hummingbird example in this paper.
FIGURE 2
Open in figure viewer
PowerPoint
Operational biological sex definitions applied to hummingbirds (Bleiweiss 1992; Bleiweiss 1999; Bleiweiss 2001; Diamant et al. 2021; Falk et al. 2022; Falk et al. 2021) where sex is operationally defined by binary plumage phenotypes in the field. Each row depicts a wild individual hummingbird with morphological traits (beak length, plumage coloration), behavioural traits (territoriality) and their unobserved gamete type. This example illustrates how the same individual can be operationally defined as one sex in the field (based on external phenotypes) but classified as a different sex based on their gametes (which cannot be easily observed in the field), highlighting how definitional choices shape scientific reporting of sex.
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Ben Barr @benjaminbarr.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
#PublicHealth #EpiSky #AcademicSky #HealthInequalities bsky.app/profile/robe...
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Roberta Piroddi @roberta-piroddi.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
Do you want to help improve the health of people experiencing homelessness using data? Come work with @lizcamacho-phd.bsky.social, @benjaminbarr.bsky.social and me and join @livunihipr.bsky.social and @livunichil.bsky.social, apply 👇https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSB121/research-associate-grade-7
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Owen Davies @odavies9.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
I'm all for #CountBinFace but with my folklorist hat on, I have to call him out on his 99 policy. No evidence for it, and other alternative histories available. See my free article on the history of ice cream vans .... www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
A Folklorist Looks at Ice Cream Vans
Of all the commercial road vehicles that have toured the streets and tourist spots of Britain, Ireland, America, and Australia over nearly a century, none elicit more popular reminiscence and senti...
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Ben Barr @benjaminbarr.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Ko-fi.com/home/coffees...
ko-fi.com
Ben Barr just supported Count Binface on Ko-fi! ❤️
Ko-fi lets you support creators you love with tips, memberships and shop sales!
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