Discrimination and health

Discrimination and health

This project aims to examine the impact of perceived discrimination on subjective and objective measures of health and wellbeing. There is growing interest in the phenomenon of discrimination as a social determinant of health, but high-quality evidence on its impact on health and wellbeing over time is currently lacking, and the underlying causal dynamics are poorly understood. Using data from three longitudinal cohort studies (n >220,000) from the UK and Europe, this work aims to (i) critically examine the effects of discrimination on health and wellbeing, and (ii) begin to unpick the explanatory mechanisms underpinning relationships between discrimination and health. A key feature of this research is the examination of the relative impact of different forms of discrimination on health, which the current evidence base is lacking. In addition to more commonly studied forms of discrimination, e.g. racism, we are examining discrimination based on a wide range of characteristics including age, sex, sexuality, and disability and how these relate to each other.

This research involves analyses of data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, UK Household Longitudinal Study (Understanding Society), and the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. It is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council's Secondary Data Analysis Initiative.

Principal Investigators: Professor Andrew Steptoe and Dr Sarah Jackson

Contact: Dr Sarah Jackson (s.e.jackson@ucl.ac.uk)