Alumna Dr Guddi Singh launches challenging BBC Radio 4 series on the crisis in child health

Dr Guddi Singh is a paediatrician, academic, and broadcaster known for her work at the intersection of medicine, social justice, and public policy. A graduate of Cambridge, Harvard and King’s College London, she trained in children’s health at leading institutions in the UK and abroad, including Boston and London, and has worked across clinical, academic, and international development settings.

Alongside her frontline work in the NHS, Dr Singh is a passionate advocate for tackling the social determinants of health; the conditions in which children are born, grow, and live. She is committed to transforming how society thinks about health, particularly the need to move beyond a narrow biomedical model toward systems that reflect the complex realities of people’s lives.

Her media work includes presenting health-focused documentaries and programmes for the BBC, Channel 4, and Al Jazeera. She is also a compelling public speaker and policy commentator, regularly engaging audiences across medicine, education, and government.

In Three Ages of Child, her new BBC Radio 4 series, she brings her personal and professional experiences together to explore the urgent state of child health in Britain and the grassroots efforts offering hope and new direction.

Read on to find out more in Guddi’s thought-provoking blog, and tune in to BBC Radio 4 on 29th at 11am to listen, share, and join the conversation.

Three Ages of Child: An Alumna’s Journey Beyond the Clinic Walls, by Dr Guddi Singh

Virginia Woolf once wrote that women must never settle for simply participating in society when we have the power to stretch it, challenge it, and transform it. That idea has shaped much of my journey — and it sits at the heart of my new BBC Radio 4 series, Three Ages of Child.

This three-part documentary, airing from late September, is the most urgent and personal project of my career so far: a journey across England to uncover what really shapes children’s health, from birth through adolescence.

Some of you may remember me from Murray Edwards International Women's Day event earlier this year, when Dorothy Byrne, who at the time was the College President, gave me the unusual gift of a “public therapy session” about straddling medicine and the media. This series feels like a continuation of that conversation: an exploration of what happens when you take a clinician’s gaze beyond the clinic walls, and ask harder questions about justice, society, and the future we are building for our children.

From Hartlepool to Cambridge

I grew up in Hartlepool, a working-class town in the northeast, as the daughter of immigrants. Inequality wasn’t abstract; it was everyday life. From an early age I knew that opportunities — who is heard, who is overlooked, who thrives, who struggles — are unevenly shared. That knowledge has shaped everything I’ve done since.

As a paediatrician, I see those same inequalities written into children’s bodies. I can treat asthma, but not the damp housing that causes it. I can sit with a teenager in crisis, but not mend the broken services around them. Too often, medicine leaves me treating symptoms while the causes go untouched. That’s why Three Ages of Child begins where I began — in Hartlepool — and ends in Cambridge, tracing what it really takes for children to be healthy.

A sobering diagnosis

One of the most startling answers came from Professor Sir Michael Marmot, the world’s leading authority on health inequalities:

“What happened in 2010? We had the onset of austerity. Five years later, our five-year-old children were no longer growing at the same rate. At age five, children in the UK are seven centimetres shorter than in the Netherlands.”

It’s a simple fact but devastating: a visible sign that too many children here are not thriving.

And behind that statistic lies a bigger truth I saw everywhere on my journey: Health begins long before the hospital — in homes, schools, and playgrounds. Families are bounced between services that rarely join up. Communities step in — baby banks, schools, youth clubs — but they do it on shoestring budgets. And inequality runs through it all, shaping children’s lives from birth.

That’s the diagnosis: child health in Britain isn’t just struggling; compared to other rich countries, it’s going backwards.

Glimpses of hope

And yet, the story is not only one of decline. What I also found was deeply hopeful: ordinary people, against the odds, already creating health in their communities.

In Hartlepool, I met a headteacher reinventing school as a hub meeting social needs. In Tower Hamlets, I saw adventure playgrounds that not only give children the freedom to play, but also feed them hot meals after school. In Devon, teenagers themselves are co-designing mental health services that reflect their realities, not just the assumptions of professionals.

These efforts are fragile, held together by volunteers and donations, but they are proof of what’s possible. They show that health is not just the business of doctors or hospitals. It is everyone’s business.

A Cambridge story

For readers of this newsletter, there is a Cambridge story too. In the final episode, I return to the city where I trained to visit the site of the new Cambridge Children’s Hospital — the first in the UK to fully integrate physical and mental healthcare for children and young people.

Dr Isobel Heyman, Murray Edwards fellow and the hospital’s clinical co-lead for mental health, put it simply:

“Traditionally, physical and mental health have been treated separately. That doesn’t make sense medically, and it doesn’t make sense for families. Cambridge Children’s will be the first place in this country where both are truly joined up.”

I also met members of the hospital’s youth forum, young people who are helping to design the wards, clinics, and family spaces. Their requests were simple but powerful: rooms filled with colour rather than sterile white walls; spaces where learning could continue alongside treatment; a hospital that feels like it belongs to them.

These conversations in Cambridge left me hopeful. Even at a time when NHS services are under huge pressure, innovation is possible. We can design better systems, listen more closely to families, and make choices that reflect the kind of society we want to be.

Why this matters — and an invitation

At heart, Three Ages of Child is not just a radio documentary. It is an invitation to rethink what we owe our children, and to face uncomfortable truths about the kind of society we are becoming. Medicine cannot fix these problems alone. The solutions lie far beyond the clinic — in housing, education, social security, and the communities we build. We once had inspiring models of child health in this country, but many have been dismantled. The question now is whether we have the courage and political will to create new ones.

For me, this project brings together all the threads of my work so far — doctoring, broadcasting, leading teams, researching, rethinking medical education. At every step, my focus has been on radically reimagining institutions from the ground up, because for most of us, nothing can be taken for granted. That is why I feel such a responsibility to the people I spoke to for this series: mothers making impossible choices, teachers acting as social workers, young people brave enough to speak their truth. Their stories deserve to be heard widely.

And so I return to Woolf’s words. Women must never settle for simply participating in society when we have the power to stretch it, challenge it, and transform it. I believe the same is true for child health. We cannot be content with tinkering at the edges — we must reimagine the whole.

As fellow members of the Murray Edwards community, I invite you to listen, share, and join the conversation. The more people tune in, the clearer the signal to the BBC, to policymakers, and to government that child health matters — and that people care.

Listen to Three Ages of Child

• BBC Radio 4, broadcast across three weeks from September 29th at 11am
• Available on BBC Sounds

Together, we can ensure these voices are heard — and perhaps begin to build the fairer, healthier society our children deserve.