Vaccines and headaches - with Heather Angus-Leppan and Whitney Robinson

BMJ talk medicine

Two topics currently being hotly discussed in the media and in clinical practice are headaches after the COVID vaccine, and the impact that structural racism is having on vaccine uptake. Headache and fever are common symptoms after a vaccination, but there are concerns about the potential link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clots, and these concerns, exacerbated by the recent frenzy of media coverage, may be damaging the general public’s faith in the vaccination programme, and impacting uptake. In this week’s episode, we discuss how GPs may safely assess for cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CSVT) in a patient presenting with a headache post vaccine, and the difficulty of gauging the scale of the risk of blood clots. We also talk about the controversial Sewell Report, which concluded that institutional racism is no longer a problem in the UK, and how, once we reach a post-COVID world, we need to focus more on wellbeing and work towards a fairer healthcare system for all. Our guests: Heather Angus-Leppan is a consultant neurologist, and epilepsy lead at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, as well as an honorary senior lecturer at UCL and Imperial College London. Whitney Robinson is an associate professor of epidemiology in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is also the co-host of the Acadames podcast https://www.acadamespodcast.com/ Further reading: - "Black people need better vaccine access, not better vaccine attitudes" by Rhea Boyd, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/05/opinion/us-covid-black-people.html - "The health-care industry doesn't want to talk about this single word," by Ron Wyatt, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/05/health-care-racism-medicine/ - "The Sewell report cited my work - just not the parts highlighting structural racism," by Michael Marmot, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/07/sewell-report-structural-racism-research - "Black Memes Matter: #LivingWhileBlack With Becky and Karen," by Apryl Williams, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2056305120981047