Health inequalities and public health policy

Helena Tunstall is an RCUK Academic Fellow in Health Inequalities and Public Health Policy. The RCUK Academic Fellowship scheme is intended to provide contract researchers with a path into academia to develop as an independent researcher and lecturer over a five year time period combining research, teaching, project management and outreach to schools. Her fellowship is one of two RCUK Fellowships in the Department of Health Sciences focused upon public health research developing methodologies for evaluating the impacts of current UK policies on the socioeconomic determinants of health and their associated inequalities. The research in the first year of her fellowship has focused upon migration within the UK and its relationship with spatial inequalities in health. As part of this project, literature reviews of research into the relationship between migration and spatial inequalities in health and area-based social policies to reduce inequalities of health in the UK have been completed. The Millennium Cohort Study has also been used to analyse the health and social characteristics of families in the UK that have moved home during pregnancy and child infancy.