Enhancing lifelong health and well-being
Ben Fincham
The ways in which we feel healthy or unhealthy are many and various, but over the last century have tended to be distilled into physical illness on the one hand and mental illness on the other. In this dichotomy, social factors involved in health and illness have been frequently overlooked. The research* of Ben Fincham, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, uses sociology to explore factors that support or contradict particular views of issues of health and illness. Ben’s research focuses on suicide and also on the relationship between mental health and work, with the aim of improving understanding of factors that support suicidal behaviour and challenging the cultural maxim that work is unquestionably good for people with mental health problems.
*funded by Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) and the Community University Partnership Programme (CUPP)
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Gail Davey
Cross-disciplinary research is vital in investigating the causes, prevention and treatment of podoconiosis, a disfiguring and debilitating leg swelling contracted by barefoot farmers in the tropical highlands. At Brighton and Sussex Medical School – a partnership between the Universities of Brighton and Sussex and the NHS – Dr Gail Davey*, Reader in Global Health and Executive Director of Footwork, the International Podoconiosis Initiative, works with collaborators across three continents. These include mineralogists, geneticists, geologists and epidemiologists to understand the causes of podoconiosis; public-health practitioners, social scientists and economists to define the impact of disease; and policy-makers and industry to ensure that research is translated into interventions that will eradicate podoconiosis within our lifetime.
*funded by the Wellcome Trust
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Liz Hill
We live in a world contaminated by mixtures of man-made chemicals, many of which can have long-term effects on wildlife and human health. Some environmental contaminants can disrupt the endocrine system of animals resulting in sexual dysfunction and a reduction in fertility. Liz Hill, Professor of Environmental Toxicology at Sussex, uses trace chemical profiling techniques to identify the structures of estrogenic and androgen-blocking chemicals present in the environment. Her research* has shed new light on how chemicals present in waste water effluents cause feminisation of male fish in UK rivers.
*funded by the European Commission and the Natural Environment Research Council
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