The Lifecourse Podcast: Recent Episodes
ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies, UCL
A podcast from the ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies at University College London looking at how life gets under our skin and how our physical and mental health interact with and are affected by our social and economic circumstances and environment. Short interviews with researchers about their findings and their implications for policy and society. Details of all the research discussed can be found in the Publications section of the ICLS website.
In Episode 6 of Series 2 of The Lifecourse Podcast we're talking about the impact on young people's lives of positive exoperiences and asling if it's time to shift the research and policy narrative away from the negative exoeriences facing those young people. Chris Garrington is joined by Rebecca Lacey a researcher based at UCL who's been investigating how positive experiences are linked with children and young people's physical and mental health and Ann Hagell from the Association for Young People's Health.
Further information
- Association for Young People's Health
- Taking a ‘positive’ look at child health development ,Child of our Time blog
- The effect of adverse and positive experiences on inflammatory markers in Australian and UK childrenis research by Naomi Priest and colleagues and is published in Brain, Behaviour and Immunity – Health
- Factors mitigating the harmful effects of intimate partner violence on adolescents’ depressive symptoms—A longitudinal birth cohort study is research by David Gondek and colleagues and is published in JCPP Advances
In Episode 5 of Series 2 of The Lifecourse Podcast, Professor Scott Montgomery of Örebro University discusses research showing an increased likelihood of drug misuse and suicidal behaviour among young people who have lost a parent around the anniversary of their death. He is joined by child bereavement specialist Beck Ferrari and Olivia Clark-Tate whose father died nearly 10 years ago.
Further information
- Substance use disorder and suicide-related behaviour around dates of parental death and its anniversaries: a register-based cohort study is reserach published in The Lancet Public Health
- Drug misuse and suicidal behaviour more common on the anniversary of a parent’s death – new research is a blog by Scott Montgomery published in The Conversation.
In Episode 4 of Series 2 of The Lifecourse Podcast, Dr Anja Heilmann from the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London (UCL) talks about the physical punishment of children and how and where the law is being used to protect children against it. She's joined by Bruce Adamson, the Children and Young People's Commissioner for Scotland and children's rights advocate and former Irish Senator Jillian van Turnhout. Together they talk about how the law has been changed in Ireland, Scotland and Wales and discuss the prospects for change in England.
Futher information
- Equally protected?: a review of the evidence on the physical punishment of children Report by Anja Heilmann, Yvonne Kelly, Richard Watt, published by the NSPCC
- Physical punishment and child outcomes: a narrative review of prospective studies Journal article by Anja Heilmann, Anita Mehay, Richard G Watt, Yvonne Kelly, Joan E Durrant, Jillian van Turnhout and Elizabeth T Gershoff, The Lancet
- There is no longer a debate. End the physical punishment of children now! Blog, Child of our Time (UCL)
In Episode 3 of Series 2 of The Lifecourse Podcast, Dr Rebecca Lacey from ICLS is in conversation with Kirsten Asmussen from the Early Intervention Foundation about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).
Further reading and useful links
- Early Intervention Foundation (website)
- ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies (website)
- Adverse childhood experiences: What we know, what we don't know, and what should happen next (EIF report)
- Adverse childhood experiences: Building consensus on what should happen next (EIF report)
- Practitioner Review: Twenty years of research with adverse childhood experience scores – Advantages, disadvantages and applications to practice (journal article)
- What should happen next? Identifying next steps for taking the ACEs evidence forward through a consensus-building exercise (blog)
- Health screening using adverse childhood experiences: further evidence highlights the need to hit pause
- Unpicking childhood trauma and its later life effects (blog)
In Episode Two of Series 2 of the Lifecourse Podcast from the we discus getting to grips with Multiple Sclerosis. Our guests are from Örebro University and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, who has been researching MS for more than 20 years. Helen Andrew, who has been diagnosed with MS and , senior research manager at the . Further reading: Review of research on MS on the ICLS Child of our Time blog – by Scott Montgomery. is research by Kelsi A Smith, Sarah Burkill, Ayako Hiyoshi, Tomas Olsson, Shahram Bahmanyar, David Wormser, Yvonne Geissbuhler, Alan Moore, Vineetkumar Kharat and Scott Montgomery. is research by Kelsi A Smith, Ayako Hiyoshi, Sarah Burkill, Shahram Bahmanyar, Johan Öckinger, Lars Alfredsson, Tomas Olsson and Scott Montgomery. is research by Scott Montgomery, Ayako Hiyoshi, Sarah Burkill, Lars Alfredsson, Shahram Bahmanyar and Tomas Olsson.
In Episode Two of Series 2 of the Lifecourse Podcast from the ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies we discus getting to grips with Multiple Sclerosis. Our guests are Scott Montgomery from Örebro University and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, who has been researching MS for more than 20 years. Helen Andrew, who has been diagnosed with MS and David Coutts, senior research manager at the MS Society. Further reading:
Review of research on MS on the ICLS Child of our Time blog – “Joining the dots between teenage infections and Multiple Sclerosis” by Scott Montgomery.
Comorbid disease burden among MS patients 1968-2012: A Swedish register-based cohort study is research by Kelsi A Smith, Sarah Burkill, Ayako Hiyoshi, Tomas Olsson, Shahram Bahmanyar, David Wormser, Yvonne Geissbuhler, Alan Moore, Vineetkumar Kharat and Scott Montgomery.
Hospital diagnosed pneumonia before age 20 years and multiple sclerosis risk is research by Kelsi A Smith, Ayako Hiyoshi, Sarah Burkill, Shahram Bahmanyar, Johan Öckinger, Lars Alfredsson, Tomas Olsson and Scott Montgomery.
Concussion in adolescence and risk of multiple sclerosis is research by Scott Montgomery, Ayako Hiyoshi, Sarah Burkill, Lars Alfredsson, Shahram Bahmanyar and Tomas Olsson.
In Episode One of Series 2 of the Lifecourse Podcast, Dr Thierry Gagné from the ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies at University College London and Cynthia Callard, Executive Director at Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada discuss a body of new research on smoking and vaping in Canada published in a special issue journal.
- Tobacco control and Canada’s endgame is Part 1 of a Special Issue of the Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention in Canada Journal edited by Jennifer O'Loughlin and Thierry Gagné.
- Tobacco smoking prevention and control in Canada: where do we go from here? is an editorial written by Jennifer O'Loughlin and Thierry Gagné on Part 1 of the special issue.
In this episode of the Lifecourse Podcast from the ESRC International Centre for life course studies at UCL Dr Baowen Xue and Professor Anne McMunn discuss how they used specially collected COVID19 data to look at how couples divided up housework, childcare and homeschooling during lockdown, who was most likely to change their work pattern and the impact on mental health. Further information
In this episode of the Lifecourse Podcast from the ESRC International Centre for life course studies at UCL Dr Baowen Xue and Professor Anne McMunn discuss how they used specially collected COVID19 data to look at how couples divided up housework, childcare and homeschooling during lockdown, who was most likely to change their work pattern and the impact on mental health.
Further information * Gender differences in the impact of the Covid-19 lockdown on unpaid care work and psychological distress in the UK
In this episode of The Lifecourse Podcast, Professor Amanda Sacker and Dr Emily Murray discuss their research looking at the long term consequences on a person’s health from a childhood spent in care.
Further reading * Non-parental care in childhood and health up to 30 years later: ONS Longitudinal Study 1971–2011 * Association of childhood out-of-home care status with all-cause mortality up to 42-years later: Office of National Statistics Longitudinal Study
Sonia Livingstone from the London School of Economics discusses the research behind her new book, Parenting for a digital future: how hopes and fears about technology shape children’s lives.
She explains how she and co-researcher Alicia Blum-Ross gained access to the homes and lives of parents keen to share their hopes, fears and experiences of parenting in the digital age and offers new important insights for policymakers, educators, and researchers keen to understand how parents and families can be best supported around the use of new technologies in a digital world.
Snehal Pinto Pereira from ICLS discusses her research in the International Journal of Epidemiology looking at the links between obesity across childhood into adulthood and their ability to manage daily physical tasks later on in life.
Details of the papers discussed in the podcast Adult obesity and mid-life physical functioning in two British birth cohorts: investigating the mediating role of physical inactivity is research by Snehal M Pinto Pereira, Bianca L De Stavola, Nina T Rogers, Rebecca Hardy, Rachel Cooper, Chris Power.
Birthweight, lifetime obesity and physical functioning in mid-adulthood: a nationwide birth cohort study is research by Nina Rogers, Chris Power and Snehal M Pinto Pereira.
Thierry Gagné from ICLS discusses research with Ingrid School and Amanda Sacker exploring the links between voter turnout and health.
The research, which made use of data from the 1958 and 1970 Birth Cohorts, showed that compared with people in good health, those who said they were in fair health had 15% and 18% lower odds of voting whilst those in poor or worse health had 17% and 32% lower odds of voting.
In a special episode of the Lifecourse Podcast, guest host UCL PhD student Emma Walker discusses young people's social media use and their mental health. Her guests are undergraduate students, Loes Wals, Kritika Rai and Alyson Ong. With support from ICLS and the National Literacy Trust they put on a workshop for 50 schoolchildren discussing their thoughts and attitudes about their social media use and research from Professor Yvonne Kelly showing a link between heavy social media use and increased depressive symptoms.
- Read the full research paper
- Read a blog by Yvonne Kelly about the research
- Read a blog for the Royal Society for Public Health from Emma Walker
- National Literacy Trust
Jean Twenge, Professor of Psychology at San Diego State University discusses her research on the links between heavy social media and screen use and increased levels of depression and anxiety among young people in the US and the UK.
- Find out more about Jean Twenge
- Listen to ICLS Director Yvonne Kelly discuss her research on the links between social media and young people's mental health with Shirley Cramer, CEO of the Royal Society for Public Health
Cath Mercer from University College London and Clare Tanton from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine discuss research looking at the intimate encounters of 14 year-olds in the Millennium Cohort Study and what it tells us about helping to set young people on a positive path to happy, healthy relationships.
Nina Rogers from the ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies at UCL discusses her research published in the Journals of Gerontology looking at cultural engagement as a possible risk-reducing factor for frailty.
It seems young people are drinking less alcohol than they used to. Research published in the BMC Public Health Journal shows that almost a third of 16 to 24-year-olds in 2015 said they didn't drink, compared with around one in five in 2005. In this episode of the Lifecourse Podcast, Dr Linda Ng Fat from the Department for Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London, explains more about the research.
In this episode of The Lifecourse Podcast, CEO of the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) Shirley Cramer and Professor Yvonne Kelly from the ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies at UCL discuss the negative effects of heavy social media use on young people's mental health and happiness. They also talk about the RSPH #ScrollFreeSeptember campaign and the All Party Parliamentary Inquiry into the issue.
Heavy drinking and smoking, poor diet and a lack of physical activity have been shown to go hand in hand in adults from more disadvantaged backgrounds. But research from ICLS PhD student, Claire Mawditt, hints that, contrary to previous evidence, being disadvantaged as a pre-adolescent child is not in itself a predictor of those sorts of negative health behaviours later in life. In this episode of the Lifecourse Podcast she talks to Chris Garrington about the research and its implications for policy.
The Government recently announced that, after a review of the older person's bus pass, it would continue for the foreseeable future. Some of the evidence that fed into that review was produced by researchers Libby Webb (formerly ICLS now Age UK researcher) and Anthony Laverty from Imperial College London. In this episode of The Lifecourse Podcast, they discuss how their findings fed into the policy process and review of evidence that helped secure the future of the bus pass.
We are all being told we need to save harder and longer for our retirement. The State Pension isn’t enough to live on and so we all need to make provision for the day when we will no longer be earning or have access to a salary or a wage. For most of us, this means saving into a pension scheme - maybe one that our employer organises or something we arrange privately. But who exactly has a pension and what sort of background do they come from? In this episode of the Lifecourse Podcast, Professor David Blane discusses research looking to answer that question and discusses the ramifications for policymakers, employers and workers of the key findings. Further information Occupational pensions: a bridge between social class before and after labour market exit? is research by Myer Glickman (UCL), Mel Bartley (UCL) and David Blane (UCL and Imperial College) and is published as an ICLS Working Paper. Link to research: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/iehc/research/epidemiology-public-health/research/international-centre-for-lifecourse-studies/publications/DB-Working-paper
The British Birth Cohort Studies are often described as ‘the jewel in the crown’ of British science. They are used on a daily basis by life course researchers at ICLS to try to better understand how life gets under our skin and to help policy makers, practitioners and the public know when and how to act to help people live long, healthy and happy lives. In this episode of the Lifecourse Podcast, author of The Life Project and Nature Magazine’s Chief Features Editor, Helen Pearson talks about how the cohort studies have touched all our lives and reflects on ICLS research findings presented in the booklet, Never too early, Never too Late. www.ucl.ac.uk/icls/publications/booklets/N2EN2L
Being able to get out and about as we get older is important for our health and wellbeing. But what needs to be put in place at what point in our lives to help us achieve that? In this episode of The Lifecourse Podcast, Tarani Chandola talks about ICLS research presented in a new booklet Never too Early, Never too Late, which shows some of the factors linked to an active and healthy life in older age.
In this episode of The Lifecourse Podcast, Morten Wahrendorf discuss the link between the quality of midlife work and the uptake of volunteering during retirement. His research uses data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) which is a multidisciplinary and cross-national panel database of micro data on health, socio-economic status and social and family networks of approximately 110,000 individuals from 20 European countries (+Israel) aged 50 or older.
There is growing evidence that unemployment is linked to long term illness and increased mortality. In this episode of The Lifecourse Podcast, Amanda Hughes discusses the findings from her research on the links between unemployment and killer diseases such as heart disease.
In this episode of The Lifecourse Podcast, Scott Montgomery discusses the links between stress resilience and physical fitness in adolescents and coronary heart disease in middle age.
In this episode of The Lifecourse Podcast, Amanda Sacker discusses research showing striking socioeconomic inequalities with early adolescents from the poorest families 3 times more likely to be obese compared with their wealthier counterparts.
In this episode of The Lifecourse Podcast, Yvonne Kelly discusses her research looking at who is drinking alcohol at age 11.
In this episode of The Lifecourse Podcast, Tarani Chandola discusses whether or not it is good for a person's health to work past the traditional retirement age.
In this episode of The Lifecourse Podcast, Ellen Flint investigates the link between different forms of commuting and commuters' Body Mass Index (BMI) and body fat.