Maurice Bloch Seminar Dr Daniel Holman Friday 6 November 2015

We are pleased to invite you to:

The Institute of Health and Wellbeing Maurice Bloch Annual Lecture Series 2015/16

Title: The Representation of Social Science and Social Context in Health Behaviour Interventions: a Literature Trend and Co-citation Analysis

Date: Friday 6 November 2015

Time: 1pm lunch will be served 30mins beforehand

Venue: Yudowitz Seminar Room, Wolfson Medical School Building

Chair: Dr Chris Bunn

Abstract:

In recent years Health Behaviour Interventions (HBIs) have received a great deal of attention in both research and policy as a means of encouraging people to lead healthier lives. Such interventions have often been criticised for framing health as a matter of individual conscious choice and ignoring wider social issues, including health inequalities. Part of this criticism is that HBIs do not draw on social science understandings of the structured and contextual aspects of behaviour and health. Yet to date, no systematic evidence has been produced on the extent to which the HBI field has paid attention to issues of social context. In this paper we undertake a literature trend and co-citation analysis to explore representation of social context in HBIs, and analyse changes over time. We find that the number of HBIs has grown rapidly in recent years, especially since 2006, and that references to social science disciplines and concepts that are particularly focussed on social context are rare, and relatively speaking, constitute less of the field post-2006. Individualised and quantifiable concepts are used most, and more theoretical or inequality-related ones least. The document co-citation analysis revealed that pre-2006, papers referring to social context were relatively diffuse in the network of key citations, but post-2006 this influence had largely diminished. The journal co-citation analysis showed less disciplinary overlap post-2006. Thus despite increased attention to the promise of social science for the field and a number of potentially useful developments, it seems that HBIs have little drawn on social science understandings of social context but have rather increasingly focused on individualised approaches.

Biography

I joined the department in November 2014 to work with Alan Walker on social policy and ageing projects. I obtained my PhD in 2012 from the University of Essex, under the supervision of Joan Busfield. I was previously Research Associate at the University of Cambridge from 2012-2014.

My PhD was ESRC funded, including an Advanced Quantitative Training component. It used a mixed-methods approach, and the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, to investigate the relationship between social class and the use of talking treatments (i.e. counselling and psychotherapy) for common mental health problems. I have appeared on BBC Radio 4 to talk about this research. Publications arising from it are listed below.

My subsequent role at the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge involved working on a diabetes peer support randomised controlled trial. It picked up on key themes from my PhD in three ways: 1) the substantive topic was ‘talking for the purpose of health gain’ 2) the role was interdisciplinary, engaging with perspectives from public health, psychology, and medicine 3) the research involved using a range of quantitative and qualitative approaches. This post gave me a particular interest in the juncture between the different disciplines which have a stake in health and illness, and the interplay between individual behaviour and social determinants.

I have always been excited by research which has clear practical implications, especially in relation to socioeconomic/social class health inequalities. My current role focuses on social policy and social inequalities more generally, including those related to ageing in particular. I am currently researching how the concept of social quality can do useful work in this area. Methodologically, my strengths are in survey research and the analysis of secondary datasets.