Socio-Structural Processes Underlying the Production of Health Inequalities over the Life Course: Theoretical Tools and Empirical Evidence

Session 2: Capturing the incorporation of the social: socialization (sociology) and embodiment (social epidemiology)

Discussion: Anne McMunn (University College London)

Abstract

Understanding how structural, social and psychosocial factors come to affect our health resulting in health inequalities allows us to move beyond description towards policy interventions. Based on concepts developed by scholars from different disciplines, I will provide the backdrop to a conceptual framework for research on social-to-biological processes, which may be important contributors to health inequalities. I will explain the broad sets of mechanisms that may allow us to comprehend how socially structured exposures become embodied over the life course. I will describe an intersectional embodiment dynamic framework, its uses, and how it may serve to examine the manner through which intermeshed systems of oppression affect social exposures, which may be expressed biologically. Using empirical evidence over the last decade from the field of social epidemiology I will explain the usefulness of this framework as a tool for carrying-out and interpreting research through an equity lens, providing scientific evidence to challenge genetic and other forms of essentialism, often used to dismiss social inequalities in health.

Michelle Kelly-Irving

Michelle Kelly-Irving is Director of Research at Inserm. She works on the production of social inequalities in health over the lifespan through incorporation processes. She is a social epidemiologist working at the Center for Epidemiology and Research on Health Populations (CERPOP) at Inserm-Université de Toulouse, France, where she leads the EQUITY research team.

Anne McMunn

Anne McMunn is Professor of Social Epidemiology in the Research Department of Epidemiology & Public Health at UCL. Anne's research is concentrated on the social determinants of health within a life course epidemiological framework. More specifically, she investigates the influence on health and wellbeing of family care and unpaid care work, employment and social relationship characteristics, and she is also interested in how gender and socioeconomic position structure these associations. She is Co-Director of Equalise: ESRC Centre for Lifecourse Health and was recently PI of the EUROCARE international consortium investigating the impact of providing adult care at different stages of the life course across European countries in different