Links from education to health
On Tuesday 6 December 2005, WBL and the MRC National Survey of Health and Development held a round table made up of academics, policy makers and other interested parties to discuss the relationship between education and health across a variety of disciplines, in particular economics, public health, and sociology. From the WBL perspective, one objective of the roundtable was to facilitate the completion of the first draft of a report to the OECD's Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI). This report reviews theory and evidence on the complex effects of education on health. A further objective was to support links between the different research groups represented at the meeting.
The three-hour round table included presentations from Richard Wilkinson of the Division of Epidemiology and Public Health at University of Nottingham; Marcus Richards and Stephani Hatch of the MRC National Survey of Health and Development at University College London; and Arnaud Chevalier of the University of Kent's economics department. The WBL Director, Leon Feinstein gave the final presentation, which highlighted the major features of the conceptual model developed by WBL researchers to structure the review of the evidence on the OECD project. Each presentation was followed by a short question-and-answer session. The round table ended with a discussion of cross-cutting issues, including policy concerns.
