Health@PBS

From the world to the lab and back again.

PBS faculty members use their diverse psychological and behavioural insights to address fundamental questions of health and well-being. The research is truly global, from the wide range of countries reached, to the context of local everyday settings in which health is lived and negotiated.

Smoking, obesity, sedentary lifestyle, unhealthy diet, alcohol and drugs remain some of the biggest global health challenges. In both developed and developing countries, there is increasing use of financial and non-financial incentives to impact healthy behaviours through policy interventions. But what are the unintended consequences of these incentives? Research in this area addresses issues such as behavioural spillovers, behavioural change, carryover effects, and measures of happiness and well-being.

Professor Paul Dolan

Dolan's work focusses on developing measures of happiness and subjective well-being that can be used in policy, particularly in the valuation of non-market goods and in 'joining up' the impact of changes in health, crime, the environment etc; and the ways in which the lessons from behavioural economics can be used to understand and change individual behaviour.

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Related publications:

Adler, Matthew D., Dolan, Paul and Kavetsos, Georgios (2017) Would you choose to be happy? Tradeoffs between happiness and the other dimensions of life in a large population survey. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization . ISSN 0167-2681.

Dr. Matteo M Galizzi

Galizzi is an experimental and behavioural economist conducting behavioural experiments between the lab and the field in the area of health. Matteo’s core methodological expertise is the design of lab-field experiments, and ‘behavioural data linking’, i.e. the linkage of behavioural economics experiments to survey panels, administrative records, biomarkers banks, scan data, and other ‘big data’ sources.

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Related publications:

Galizzi, Matteo M., Machado, Sara R. and Miniaci, Raffaele (2016) Temporal stability, cross-validity, and external validity of risk preferences measures: experimental evidence from a UK representative sample. The London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Social Policy, London, UK.
Galizzi, Matteo M., Miraldo, Marisa, Stavropoulou, Charitini and van der Pol, Marjon (2016) Doctor–patient differences in risk and time preferences: a field experiment. Journal of Health Economics, 50 . pp. 171-182. ISSN 0167-6296
Dolan, Paul and Galizzi, Matteo M. (2015) Like ripples on a pond: behavioral spillovers and their implications for research and policy. Journal of Economic Psychology, 47 . pp. 1-16. ISSN 0167-4870

Community Psychology promotes dialogue between academics, practitioners and marginalised communities in the interests of developing the theory and practice of collective action for health and well-being. The group is comprised of internationally renowned community health psychologists, social psychologists and research students.

Professor Catherine Campbell

Campbell explores the role of various forms of collective action (ranging from community mobilisation to social movements) - and associated social policies - in tackling the social determinants of health inequalities in local and global settings. She has a particular interest in responses to gender-based violence; mental health; and HIV/AIDS. She has explored these issues in many different countries and contexts, including South Africa, Zimbabwe, India, England, Japan, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Brazil, Rwanda, Uganda, Cambodia, Ghana and Zambia. Her current research focuses on responses to domestic violence in the UK, ranging from crisis management to feminist activism.

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Related publications:

Campbell, Catherine and Mannell, Jenevieve (2016) Conceptualising the agency of highly marginalised women: intimate partner violence in extreme settings. Global Public Health, 11 (1-2). pp. 1-16. ISSN 1744-1692.
Campbell, Catherine (2014) Community mobilisation in the 21st century: updating our theory of social change? Journal of Health Psychology, 19 (1). pp. 46-59. ISSN 1359-1053.
Campbell, Catherine and Burgess, Rochelle (2012) The role of communities in advancing the goals of the Movement for Global Mental Health. Transcultural Psychiatry, 49 (3-4). pp. 379-395. ISSN 1363-4615.

Dr. Flora Cornish

Cornish’s research addresses the role of community mobilisation in improving public health. Her current work investigates the engagements between local grassroots realities and globalizing development policies and management practices, with a particular focus on questions of how the regimes of ‘evidence-based practice’, monitoring, evaluation and accountability shape, enable and constrain community responses.

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Related publications:

Shukla, Anuprita and Teedon, Paul and Cornish, Flora (2016) Empty rituals? A qualitative study of users’ experience of monitoring & evaluation systems in HIV interventions in western India. Social Science & Medicine, 168. 7-15.
Skovdal, Morten and Cornish, Flora (2015) Qualitative research for development: a guide for practitioners. Practical Action Publishing, Rugby, UK. ISBN 9781853398544.
Cornish, Flora (2015) Evidence synthesis in international development: a critique of systematic reviews and a pragmatist alternative. Anthropology & Medicine , 22 (3). pp. 263-277. ISSN 1364-8470.

Social Psychology seeks to understand and develop a wider understanding of key social, economic and cultural issues and aims to develop the tools to facilitate new dialogue in these areas. Our focus on health looks at a wide range of issues including patient safety and community development, with recent research in the UK and South America.

Professor Sandra Jovchelovitch

Jovchelovitch’s research interests focus on the socio-cultural psychology of public spheres and communities, social representations and social development. Her research on the favelas of Rio de Janeiro is the basis of a programme of bottom-up social development being implemented by UNESCO in Latin America and other major cities of the global South. She currently directs an ESRC-CONFAB funded project on resilience, self-development and urban transformations in Brazilian cities.

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Related publications:

Jovchelovitch, S. (2007) Knowledge in Context: Representations, community and culture, London: Routledge Classics. Classic edition with a new introduction.
Jovchelovitch, S and Priego-Hernández, J. (2013) Underground Sociabilities: Identity, culture and resistance in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. UNESCO: Brasilia.
Jovchelovitch, S., Priego-Hernadez, J., Glaveanu, V. P. (2013) Constructing Public Worlds: The impact of culture and socio-economic context on children’s social representations of the public sphere. Culture and Psychology. 19(3) 323–347.

Dr. Tom Reader

Reader investigates how patient safety can be improved. His research explores i) how service-user complaints can be used to identify threats to safe hospital care, ii) the importance of leadership and teamwork in clinical teams for avoiding medical errors, and iii) the psychological and contextual factors that lead to variations in clinical decision-making.

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Related publications:

Reader, Tom W. (2017) Impossible decision? An investigation of risk trade-offs in the intensive care unit. Ergonomics . pp. 1-12. ISSN 0014-0139
Gillespie A, Reader TW, The Healthcare Complaints Analysis Tool: development and reliability testing of a method for service monitoring and organisational learning. BMJ Qual Saf 2016; 25:937-946.
Kapur, Narinder, Parand, Anam, Soukup, Tayana, Reader, Tom W. and Sevdalis, Nick (2015) Aviation and healthcare: a comparative review with implications for patient safety. JRSM Open, 7 (1). ISSN 2054-2704

Dr. Alex Gillespie

Gillespie's research focuses on communication, especially perspective-taking and listening to discomforting points of view. His studies are both in the field and in the laboratory, and he works at both interpersonal and organisational levels.

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