Title: Pathways: Biosocial influences on health
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: The proposed programme has a substantive and a closely linked methodological focus both with particularly relevance to the needs identified in the 2009-12 National Data Strategy to 'build upon success' by further encouraging the use of existing data sources, and to further develop the skills to analyse these resources. The substantive focus aims at the identification of the pathways that link socio-demographic circumstances and biological disadvantage to adult health, and parental family and socio-economic circumstances to infant mortality, with a particular emphasis on the mediating factors that lie on these pathways. Three embedded research projects will be undertaken on 1) pathways to and from particular fertility histories and their implications for later life health, 2) pathways to and from marital status trajectories and health in mid life, and 3) pathways from parental socio-economic and demographic circumstance to birthweight of infants and infant mortality. A smaller fourth project will demonstrate the use of genes as instrumental variables in causal analysis. An embedded PhD project will investigate the quality of data on ethnicity as recorded in a clinical research database (available for research) and study ethnic and socio-demographic variations in incidence and treatment of coronary heart disease. The methodological focus is the development and dissemination of rigorous approaches for the identification of these pathways and will include regular training courses and web-based material targeting researchers at a range of technical levels. The substantive and methodological strands will enhance the ability of the social science community to investigate specific hypotheses and therefore design public health interventions, and also to promote methodological exchange between the social and biomedical research communities. Three main research applications, and one smaller demonstration project, will guide this work and have been chosen because of their subject matter relevance, as well as for their value for illustrating methods, variables and datasets in a programme of training that is a key and major feature of this proposal. This training programme will include six face-face courses, two focussed on use of genetic and biomarker data in social science research and three on causal inference and mediation, pitched at a range of levels; associated web materials; a seminar series and two workshops, as well as participation in NCRM activities. The core multidisciplinary team includes three senior staff, two with primarily methodological and one with primarily substantive interests; two early/mid career researchers with methodological and substantive expertise; one recent postgraduate and a PhD student. Collaborators involved in the application who have committed support to the application, including delivery of training, include three clinical epidemiologists and two specialists in genetic epidemiology. Members of the team have successfully worked together before on research, joint supervision of PhD students and joint preparation and delivery of training. The application has the full support of the Faculty and School (LSHTM) and will benefit from the strong interdisciplinary research environment and excellent library and IT support services. LSHTM has applied for Doctoral Training Centre recognition as part of the Bloomsbury Consortium and strong linkages will be developed with this DTC should both applications be successful. The proposal aims to further research and research capacity at the interface of the biomedical and social sciences which was identified as a priority area in the ESRC Strategic Plan for 2009-2014.


Research activity codes: 2.3 PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FACTORS;2.1 BIOLOGICAL AND ENDOGENOUS FACTORS
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE