Health Inequalities: Psychosocial Mechanisms in Childhood and Adolescence

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Childhood and adolescence is an important period of life for development of health behaviours and psychological resources that may have consequences for physical and psychological health throughout life. Rather than just focusing on health in adolescence (which is generally good) it may be particularly important to study conditions in childhood and adolescence that pre-dispose to poor health in later life. The project examines potential mechanisms underlying social inequalities in health, focusing on psyc hosocial and behavioural mechanisms during adolescence. These mechanisms, which each may have a small impact, may together confer substantial health disadvantage. Important psychological mechanisms are linked to differential exposure to stressful life ex periences, exposure to positive developmental experiences, especially in structured youth leisure time activities, and differences in perceptions of psychosocial resources. Two different data sets will be used: 1) The Health Behaviour in School-Aged Child ren. A WHO Cross-National Survey (HBSC),which includes nationally representative questionnaire data from 11, 13 and 15 year olds in 41 European and North American countries, and 2) The EAT MORE intervention program, which has a two group pre-test post-tes t design with 15 intervention schools and 14 control schools. Data for the evaluation study has been collected by questionnaires from 654 sixth graders. Teachers (n=23) at the intervention schools responded to a questionnaire after the intervention. Multi ple indicators of SES, including conventional and non-conventional indicators, have been used in the two studies. Health indicators that are particularly relevant for adolescents will be studied, such as self-rated health, life satisfaction, emotional pro blems, somatic complaints and obesity.