Seeking the Principles of Power and Danger

New paper , with Ang Li and others, offering a framework for thinking how climate change, housing, and health intersect. The abstract: Anthropogenic climate change is causing rapid shifts in temperature and weather patterns, both in location and intensity, making living conditions increasingly hazardous. This complicates housing's frontline role in protecting human health. When housing systems fail to provide universal access to secure, affordable, and suitable housing, social and health inequalities related to climate change are amplified. The location, construction, and operation of homes influence greenhouse gas emissions and must be improved to reduce their environmental impacts. This paper, the second in a Series on housing as a social determinant of health, builds a framework for conceptualising the interactions between housing, climate, and health. It identifies the pathways through which climate change affects housing and exacerbates health risks,...

New paper out in Communications Earth & Envrionment  with Ang Li and Rebecca Bentley that looks at climate change and energy hardship. Here is the abstract:  Climate change is shifting the experience of energy hardship. Here we examine the effect of the intensity, frequency, and duration of temperature extremes on energy hardship, and how this risk is shaped by individual, housing and neighbourhood resiliencies across Australia, using nationally representative data (269,500 observations) on energy hardship linked to temperature records between 2005 and 2021. Findings suggest that the risk of energy hardship increases with more intense extreme heat and cold, with greater risks for older individuals, lone-person or single-parent households, and rental tenants. These vulnerabilities can be offset by quality housing and renewable energy installations. Energy hardship risks under moderate and high emissions global warming scenarios are projected to increase by 0.1%−2.6% and 0....

  Very happy to see this new scoping review published in The Lancet Plenatary Health . The recent IPCC assessment report argued that lack of ability to identify social vulnerability at a local and urban level was a critical barrier to climate adaptation planning. We conducted a scoping review of 230 studies that examined social vulnerability to the health effects of climate change in order to understand the main foci of the literature and potential gaps. We found that the main share of the research focused on high-income settings – the United States, Western Europe, Australia, Japan etc. China was the exception to that rule being the most researched country after the United States. The most vulnerable countries are lest studied. This is an issue for climate justice. We found that most research focuses on a narrow set of socio-demographic variables. Age, sex, ethnicity, education, income being amongst the most used indicators of social vulnerability. We found a relative paucity...

New paper by  Ang Li , Emma Baker, and Rebecca Bentley has been published in Social Science and Medicine , looking at how stable and secure tenancy affects the mental health and level of psychological distress of private renters compared to home owners. The results suggest that stability helps to close the mental health gap between those two groups by increasing renters well being at a faster rate overtime. This is interesting to me for two reasons: 1) it suggests that ontological security is more important than tenure type. It isn't necessarily homeownership that is protective of mental health. 2) it underscores the relationship between housing and mental health, and that the rights of tenants should be considered a public health issue.  Here is the abstract for ' Understanding the mental health effects of instability in the private rental sector: A longitudinal analysis of a national cohort ':  Using a population-based longitudinal dataset in Australia ov...

New paper by Ang Li (and co-authors Kadir Atalay & Stephen Whelan from the University of Sydney) looks at the effect of house price increases on renters and homeowners fertility intentions and fertility outcomes in Australia.  Housing affordability has been a big issue in Australia for some time and the impact of decreasing affordability has been linked to declining fertility rates. Atalay, Li and Whelan using data from the HILDA survey find that increasing house prices have different effects for homeowners and renters. Here is the abstract:  There is increasing evidence that housing and housing markets impact a variety of behaviors and outcomes. Using a rich panel of Australian microlevel data, we estimated the effect of housing price changes on both fertility intentions and fertility outcomes. The analysis indicates that the likelihood of having a child among homeowners is positively related to an increase in housing wealth. The positive housing wealth effect has t...

I have a new paper with  Ang Li  ( reseachgate here ) just published in  Preventive Medicine  on the impact of  No Jab, No Pay   and  No Jab, No Play  on vaccine coverage rates. We found that these policies, which removed non-medical exemptions from government benefits and childcare enrolments, were occasioned by an increase in vaccination coverage across states between 2-4% for one-year olds, 1-1.5% for two-year olds, and 1-3.5% for five-year-olds. We also found that the effect of the policy differed significantly depending on characteristics of the area. Areas that were characterised by either: lower socio-economic status, lower median income, more Family Tax Benefit recipients, or higher pre-intervention coverage had greater responsiveness to the policy changes. Variation in response to the policy changes across areas suggest the effect was largely led by lower-socioeconomic status parents who were nudged towards full vaccination, ...

I have a new paper with  Ang Li  ( reseachgate here ) just published in  Annals of Epidemiology   looking at the effects of graduating during economic downturns on mental health . We found that graduating during a time of increased unemployment is not good for either short-term mental health or long-term mental health. The scarring effect is particularly pronounced for men, people who don't receive government payments, and people with only vocational or secondary qualification. People with higher education seem to do better and graduating during downturns had less of a lasting effect. Title : Effects of graduating during economic downturns on mental health  Abstract Purpose This study examined the effects of economic downturns at the time of graduation on short-term and long-term mental health of graduates. Methods Using a large longitudinal dataset whose respondents graduated from their highest level of education between 2001 and 2018 in Australia, the study in...

. @ANGLIhere and my paper "Vaccine sentiments and under-vaccination" is now out about in the world and online for everyone to see: https://t.co/bEn4HBE75w — Mathew Toll (@MGHToll) November 18, 2020 New paper out co-authored with  Ang Li  on the issue of vaccine hesitancy and under-vaccination that looks at the factors associated with vaccine attitudes (very strongly agree with vaccines to very strongly disagree with vaccines) and vaccine behaviours around the MMR vaccine (full dosage, partial dosage, no dosage).  And the consistency between factors associated with attitudes and behaviours, showing when practical barriers impede the translation of positive vaccine attitudes into full uptake.  Title: “ Vaccinesentiments and under-vaccination: Attitudes and behaviour around Measles,Mumps, and Rubella vaccine (MMR) in an Australian cohort ” Abstract:  Objective The study aimed to examine the consistency in factors associated with attit...