Culture and Society

Research in this theme looks at how the social, cultural and political conditions of people's lives shape their health across the life-course. A large group of researchers study social determinants and health inequalities, including deprivation, housing, migration and immigration enforcement, employment, race, gender and sexual orientation. They look at how these affect conditions from dementia, multimorbidity and cancer to oral health, sickle cell disease and tuberculosis, often working with East London's diverse communities. Many also focus on mental health and child development: how childhood adversity, family stress, parenting, social connection and digital environments affect conditions such as ADHD and other forms of neurodivergence, and how social adversity becomes "biologically embedded". The theme also covers the culture of healthcare itself. This includes organisational culture and workforce wellbeing, language and communication in maternity and gender-affirming care, polypharmacy, and how services can be redesigned to be fairer and more accessible. Finally, we have a strong strand of health humanities and creative health too: the arts, music, literature, museums and social prescribing as ways to reduce isolation and improve wellbeing.

Methods range widely, from qualitative, ethnographic, participatory and co-produced research to large-scale health-record analysis, epidemiology, AI, policy analysis and natural experiments.