MacArthur Initiative "Social Upheaval and Health"

The overall aim of this 4-year initiative is to contribute to understanding of the relation between society and health by studying the health of societies undergoing major upheaval. The interdisciplinary initiative on health and social upheaval in FSU/CEE includes economists, sociologists, epidemiologists, demographers and clinicians who all have extensive research experience with FSU/CEE.

The initiative has four broad objectives:

• To understand the determinants of health of populations in countries undergoing societal transformation, particularly the pivotal role of social and psychosocial factors and the mechanisms of how these factors affect health. We also investigate a range of other factors, including alcohol, smoking, nutrition and early childhood circumstances.
• To identify the reasons why some societies are more resistant to social upheaval, and to identify elements of public policy that may alleviate the crisis.
• A more technical objective, is to clarify the data on mortality in the FSU before and after the social transformation.
• The initiative contributes to improving the local expertise in FSU/CEE in the study of population health, and to raising public awareness of the health crisis.

Structure of the proposed initiative

The proposed initiative, a result of several years of small-scale studies, consists of five complementary projects:

1. Indirect demographic approach (convenience retrospective cohort) to study mortality in Russia. This project is led by Prof Marmot, University College London, UK.

2. Multi-centre epidemiological study of the determinants of health in Russia, Poland and the Czech Republic, led by Dr Bobak and Prof Marmot, University College London, UK, with Dr Malyutina (Novosibirsk, Russia), Dr Pajak (Krakow, Poland) and Dr Kubinova (Prague, Czech Republic).

3. A detailed analysis of mortality in a longitudinal epidemiological study of men and women in St Petersburg who were first examined in the 1970s, led by Prof D Vågerö, Stockholm University & Karolinska Institute, Sweden.

4. A social historical study of long-term factors that contribute to the success or failure during societal transformation, led by Prof C Hertzman, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

5. A comparative study, using pairs of countries to identify the reasons for the presence / absence of an effective policy response, and to identify elements of public policy that would alleviate the health impact of social transformation. This project will be led by Prof G A Cornia, University of Florence, Italy.

This page last modified 10 August, 2005 by [Content Provider]