Healthy Lives in an Age of Insecurity

The Department of Psychology, Health and Professional Development is hosting an evening of discussions about the challenges to health faced by our communities at a time of insecurity, poverty and climate crisis.

These discussions will be a hybrid event, where you can select an in-person ticket and watch the talk(s) in-person at Oxford Brookes Univeirsty or you can select an online ticket where you will be sent a Zoom link closer to the day of the talk and will be able to watch the discussions live online.

Also available on Zoom.

Discussions

What has the pandemic revealed about the social determinants of public health?

Join Jabu Nala Hartley and Danny Dorling (Professor of Human Geography, University of Oxford) to explore issues such as the private sector in social care, digital poverty and food insecurity on public health outcomes.

Poverty, insecurity and the climate crisis

Join Jabu Nala Hartley and Kate Pickett (Professor of Epidemiology, University of York) to discuss why inequalities and insecurities from income, to food, to housing are driving a public health crisis, and why we need a long-term strategy to ensure the working class doesn’t pay for the climate crisis.

Race and class - how to break the cycle of health inequalities?

Join Jabu Nala Hartley and Richard Wilkinson (Professor Emeritus of Social Epidemiology at the University of Nottingham Medical School, Honorary Professor at University College London and Visiting Professor at the University of York) to discuss systemic inequalities, how to organise a more equitable society, and why this is fundamental for a healthier, happier society.

Guest speakers

Jabu Nala-Hartley

Jabu Nala-Hartley is a student on the MPH at Oxford Brookes University , also a Oxford City Councillor for Barton and Sandhills. She is Chair of the Oxford District Labour Party and the Oxford Living Wage Campaign, a former Vice Chair of the Health Overview Scrutiny Committee (HOSC), and a member of the Socialist Health Association Central Committee. Jabu was born in South Africa during Apartheid and raised by her mother, who was the first Black Woman General Secretary of the second largest trade union in South Africa (at that time the Metal and Allied Workers' Union). Jabu is committed to fighting for social justice and is an experienced campaigner both locally and nationally. Of note, she founded M4JU (Mothers 4 Justice Ubuntu), which campaigns against structural racism and injustices in the criminal justice system, and is extremely proud to have led an event on the Gig economy and insecure work, featuring Francis O'Grady, Annaliese Dodds MP, and several trade unions. At the height of Covid 19, she led the Why Vaccinate campaigns, reaching hundreds of people in Oxford in January 2021.Recently she held a meeting in Barton with workers and Prof Danny Dorling on Cost of living crisis followed recently by The role of OUH as major Anchor in Oxford.

Danny Dorling

Danny Dorling is a professor in the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford. He was previously a professor for a decade at the University of Sheffield, and before then at the University of Leeds. He has also worked as an academic in Newcastle and Bristol. He was born and brought up in Oxford. In 2020 he published 'Slowdown: The End of the Great Acceleration'—and 'Why It’s Good for the Planet, the Economy, and Our Lives' and jointly with Annika Koljonen, 'Finntopia: What we can Learn from the World’s Happiest Country'. His 2023 book is titled: ‘Shattered Nation: Inequality, and the geography of a failing state’. Danny is a patron of the road crash charity RoadPeace, of Heeley City Farm in Sheffield, and of the educational campaign group Comprehensive Future. In his spare time, he makes sandcastles on beeches with clean streams and the right kind of sand. He errs towards being optimistic about the future, because his academic work suggests, to him, that this is the most rational stance to take – despite what you may see around you.

Kate Pickett

Kate Pickett is Professor of Epidemiology, Deputy Director of the Centre for Future Health, and Associate Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity and leads the Public Health & Society research group, all at the University of York. She is co-author, with Richard Wilkinson, of The Spirit Level (2009) and The Inner Level (2018). Kate is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow by Distinction of the UK Faculty of Public Health, and a Fellow of the British Academy of Social Sciences. She was awarded an OBE in the New Year’s Honours List, 2023. She works and campaigns at global, national and local levels. Internationally, she is a full member of the Club of Rome and a trustee of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance. In the UK, she is a co-founder and patron of The Equality Trust and recently chaired the Greater Manchester Independent Inequalities Commission. Local to York, she is a patron of St Nicks Centre for Nature and Green Living and Home-Start York.

Richard Wilkinson

Richard Wilkinson is Emeritus Professor of Social Epidemiology at the University of Nottingham Medical School, Honorary Professor at University College London, and Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of York. From 1976 onwards his career has focused on research into social class differences in health, the social determinants of health, and on the health and social effects of income inequality. Always focussed on bringing the injustices of health inequalities to public attention, his books have been widely read. One became the basis of a TV documentary, 'The Great Leveller', and another a film, 'The Divide'. He was one of the founders, and is now a Trustee of The Equality Trust. His first TED talk ‘How economic inequality harms societies’ has been watched over 4 million times, and his second, ‘The link between inequality and anxiety’ was viewed over 1.75 million times in the first few months of its release in 2021.