Social Epidemiology
Analysis
BBC
4.6 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 24 September 2012
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In Britain, the health gap is growing - in the wealthiest parts of the country, people are living on average more than a decade longer than in the poorest parts.
An academic discipline which tries to work out why this health gap exists has also grown.
It's called social epidemiology. You've probably never heard of it, but the science has influenced governments of both the left and right. So what answers has it thrown up?
The most famous comes from the Whitehall II study of civil servants, led by Sir Michael Marmot, which found that people who are in high-pressure jobs, over which they have low control, are at greater risk of heart disease, because of the stress their lowly position causes.
The idea that how much control you have over your work and life affects your health has generated talk in policy-making circles about the need to empower people.
But the evidence is contested. When economists look at the same data, they see something different.
David Aaronovitch hears the arguments.
Contributors: Sir Michael Marmot, professor of epidemiology and public health at University College London Anna Coote, former UK health commissioner Danny Dorling, professor of human geography at the University of Sheffield George Davey-Smith, professor of clinical epidemiology at Bristol University Johan Mackenbach, chair of the department of public health at Erasmus University, Rotterdam Angus Deaton, professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University
Producer: Ruth Alexander.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | You're listening to Analysis from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:40.0 | In this edition, David Aronovich examines how our social environment influences our health and even our height. |
| 0:47.0 | I look down on him because I am upper class. |
| 0:51.0 | I look up to him because he is upper class. I look up to him because he is upper class, but I look down on him because he is |
| 0:57.6 | lower class. I am middle class. I know my place. |
| 1:06.5 | The Frost report in 1966. The visual joke worked because of the actor's heights. |
| 1:13.2 | Not only was John Cle's higher class than Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett, |
| 1:17.2 | but he was higher too. |
| 1:19.4 | And Barker was higher, taller than Corbett. |
| 1:22.4 | Their relative social positions determined |
| 1:25.3 | even their physical positions or was it vice versa? How social factors |
| 1:31.8 | influence the very bodies of people, their physical health, is the big question behind a discipline called social epidemiology, a question to which one man knows the answer. |
| 1:43.4 | What happens in the mind is key. |
| 1:46.8 | I've known of Michael Marmot and his work for some 20 years and he has been |
| 1:52.0 | tremendously influential how much control you feel |
| 1:56.3 | at your life the idea that that affects your health is reflected now in much more |
... |
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