Institute for Social Studies in Medical Care

The following is an interim description which may change when detailed cataloguing takes place in future:

The archive contains questionnaires and related papers from several Institute for Social Studies in Medical Care studies, 1970s-1980s:

Elderly patients and drugs

Out patients and their doctors

The aftermath of stroke

Life before death

The Institute's administrative papers are yet to be transferred to the Wellcome Library.

1970s-1980s

48 transfer boxes

The archive was given to the library at Wellcome Collection by the Institute for Social Studies in Medical Care in August and December 1993.

The Institute for Social Studies in Medical Care was established in 1970 as an independent non-profit research organisation. Prior to 1970 it was the Medical Care Research Unit of the Institute of Community Studies in Bethnal Green. Its aim was to study the social aspects of health care in ways that had a bearing on social policy. Within this rather broad field the institute tended to concentrate on three principal areas of research: general practice, maternity services and the needs of elderly people.

The Institute held charitable status and was funded by a variety of organisations including the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, the Ministry of Health and the US Public Health Service on a project basis. From 1975 it received a rolling grant from the Department for Health and Social Security in addition to grants for specific projects from other sources. Nothing further is known about the Institute, and it no longer appears to be active.

Material held elsewhere:

The National Archives holds the dataset for the Elderly patients and their Medicines survey (series reference BN 96), plus additional records of the Institute for Social Studies in Medical Care (piece reference BS 6/3372).

The Economic and Social Data Service holds datasets for the following surveys: Elderly and their Medicines; Outpatients And Their Doctors; Life Before Death.

This collection is currently uncatalogued and cannot be ordered online. Requests to view uncatalogued material are considered on a case by case basis. Please contact collections@wellcomecollection.org for more details.