Harry Burns - the social determinants of Scotland

Harry Burns was a surgeon, who gave up his career in that discipline to become a public health doctor. Eventually that lead to him being the last Chief Medical Officer of Scotland, and now he’s professor of global public health at the University of Strathclyde. Scotland has always had a separate NHS, but since devolution, the parliament there has had much more autonomy in running the country - and Harry has seemed to manage to convince them that improving health means improving the social determinants of health. In this conversation we talk about that link, how his philosophy has affected policy up there, some of the experiments which are going on in the country, and what he thinks is the most exciting change. Read the editorial on GDP and wellness:

https://www.bmj.com/content/360/bmj.k1239