Can you figure out what mosquitos and junk food have in common?
Very little you would be forgiven for thinking. But they are both related to topics in which scale is an important factor in turning science into good quality policy.
Geographic scale is a crucial concern when it comes to public health and health service provision. Issues such as environmental change, demographic composition, and access to health care all differ according to geographic context.
For example, global patterns in infectious diseases are linked to population movement and diffusion of pathogens and vectors, as we will hear from Dr Janey Messina, School of Geography and Environment. These processes are in turn affected by regional and local contexts such as socio-economic status, housing conditions, and conflict. Vector-borne diseases will be used to illustrate the differences in analysing health data at different geographic scales, as well as the implications of these varying scales of analysis for public health policy.
The notion of “healthy food access” has been conceptualised at different scales, most often at the level of regions, cities, and neighbourhoods. Dr Ben Chrisinger, Department of Social Policy and Intervention, will approach the issue of scale with regard to associations between access and health outcomes, which often show that areas with poor access (“food deserts”) have worse diet-related health. Yet evaluations of new retailers opening in food deserts reveal a more complicated story, with few improvements to health having been identified. To truly understand how access might affect health, and how public policies can improve community health outcomes, individual-level experiences must be studied.
Following presentations from both speakers, they will take questions from the audience and discuss the different methodologies they employ to address issues of scale in their respective fields.
About the speakers
Dr Janey Messina is a Research Fellow of Green Templeton College and Associate Professor in Quantitative Social Science Methods at the School of Geography and Environment.
Dr Ben Chrisinger is a Research Fellow of Green Templeton College and Associate Professor of Evidence-Based Policy Evaluation at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention.
