Social Epidemiology Evidence and Examples

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  • Created by: Psych951
  • Created on: 03-01-19 11:54

Dahlgren & Whitehead 1992 - Levels of health

  • Each level is embedded within each other so must show an awareness for all levels 
  • Consider mechanisms underlying interactions
  • Levels from out to in: General socioeconomic, cultural and environmental conditions; social and community networks; individual lifestyle; genetics
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Breakwell 1993 - Factors explaining health

  • Each of the factors work at different levels and interact to produce behaviour
  • Sociohistorical context, physical enviornmental context 
  • Sources of social influence, ideology, social representations
  • Instituional affordances, normative pressure
  • Interpersonal affordances
  • Cognitive processes, past actions
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LHO 2008 - Tube life expectancy

  • London Health Observatory plotted life expectancy according to tube map
  • Travelling East from Westminster, each stop represented nearly a year lost 
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Conrad 2001 - Fall in death rate

  • Fall in standaridsed death rates in US between 1900-1973 from nine common diseases - Medical, social and environmental improvements
  • Diseases that hit near 0 include influenza, tuberculosis and measles
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WHO 2004 - Income-organised risk factors

  • World Health Organisation ranked top 10 risk factors for low, middle and high income countries 
  • Low income top 3 were childhood underweight, unsafe sanitation and unsafe sex - Very few lifestyle components 
  • Middle income top 3 were alcohol use, high blood pressure and tobacco use but did also contain more structural issues - All risk factors overlapped with either low or high 
  • High income top 3 were tobacco use, alcohol use and obesity - No structural components 
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Paul & Dredze 2011 - Twitter

  • Filtered 1.5 million tweets from 2 billion between 2009-2010 referring to health matters
  • Health issues and medicines/treatments were mentioned
  • Used data to distinguish between types of allergy onsets, timing of allergy season etc. 
  • Limitation = difficult filtering process - Miss information that people won't share 
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Cameron et al 2013 - Social media and drugs

  • Social media was used to identify patterns in susbtance abuse
  • Provided data that was previously undiscovered
  • Used to inform a platform for investigating drug abuse on social media with 85% accuracy 
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3 studies - Social causes

  • Link & Phelan 1995 = Social factors such as SES and support causes diseases because they represent access to resources such as money knowledge and social connections that promote health 
  • Marmot 2005 = Factors inc. poverty, income, education, early life conditions, social gradient and transport - Access to these resources are socially determined
  • Logan & Spencer 1996 = Smoking and second-hand inhalation should be investigated in social and historical context - Consider that people are likely aware of health risks so what social constraints prevent change
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2 studies - Environmental causes

  • Mitchell & Popham 2008 = Exposure to green space improves health and mediates link between SES and health - Physical environment should promote health
  • Srinivasan et al 2003 = Physical and mental health is associated with built environments - Health benefits of sustainable environments - Mediating factors within built environments should be explored 
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Zielhuis & Kiemeney 2001 - Evaluating SE

  • Uses statistical methods to assess patterns in development and distribution of health in populations and assess underlying social mechanisms
  • Issue is that it is increasingly being used to describe general socio-psychological research, unrelated to health 
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Martikainen et al 2002 - Psychosocial determinants

  • Psychosocial factors mediate the effect of social structual factors and are modified by their social contexts - Interaction of levels
  • Factors include social networks, control, conflicts, effort/reward balance 
  • Issue in research of confounding variables, measurement issues and confusion in cause/effect. 
  • Need for update and evaluation of models so that they are appropriate in the current time and context 
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Campbell & Jovchelovitch 2000 - Community

  • Need to pay more attention to local contexts - Mechanisms in which community level is shaped by wider level - Participatory interventions can be useful if they consider the below 2 factors
  • Empowerment = Taking control over health via collective efficacy and participation can help change social realities to promote health
  • Social captial/community cohesion = Networks, civic engagement and reciprocal help and local identities create a supportive context to renegotiate behaviour 
  • Participation has a two-way relationship with the 3 pillars of community and can help shape them in a health promoting way: Social identities, shared view of the world and conditions of participation 
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