North East England Health Summit:Inequalities-related stress

Tuesday 28 June 2016

Welcome to the Stress Summitand aim of the event

Dr Emily HendersonFuse Lecturer in Knowledge Exchange in Public HealthResearch Fellow in Complex Health SystemsCentre for Public Policy and Health WHO Collaborating Centre Complex Health SystemsResearch, Knowledge and ActionSchool of Medicine, Pharmacy and Healthe.j.henderson@durham.ac.uk

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Fuse Complex SystemsResearch Programme

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Wolfson Special Interest GroupStress, Health and Wellbeing

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Themes1) Experiences of stress and inequalities;2) Biopsychosocial understandings of stress (including health behaviours);3) Mental health, public mental health and wellbeing;4) Precarious employment, neoliberal labour market and welfare ‘reforms’ and stress;5) Socio-ecological effects on stress, health and wellbeing.

https://www.dur.ac.uk/wolfson.institute/sig/stress

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To gather those in academia, policy, and practice either working on or concerned about inequalities-related life stress, in order to collaborate on putting knowledge into action.

Purpose of today’s health summit

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• Nearly half of UK adults report feeling stressed every day or every few days (Mental Health Foundation)

Why study stress and health?

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Acute stress: short-term, common, recover quickly• muscle tensions, digestive problems, emotional

upsetPost-traumatic stress: anxiety disorder from traumatic

event/s, e.g. sexual assault, war, abuse• Nightmares, flashbacks, anxietyChronic stress: long-term, detrimental to health, adjust• Mental illnesses, suicide, violence, heart attack,

stroke, maybe cancer

Types of stress

6American Psychological Association

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Demands and coping

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• A biological reality, stress can be studied as a mechanism of social suffering

• Experience of illness varies across culture

• Emotions are expressed through cultural contexts

• Strong role here for interdisciplinary, participatory research

Stress as a universal experience

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• Different experiences of stress by gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status lead to inequalities in physical and mental health, including discrimination stress.

• Stressors occur over the lifecourse and across generations, widening health inequalities

• Policy and practice recommendations: • Structural conditions that put people at risk of stressors at macro and

meso levels of intervention• Focus on children who are at lifetime risk of ill health and distress due

to exposure to poverty and stressful family circumstances• Coping and support interventions (micro levels)

• In the UK and north east: austerity, continued austerity, and certainly uncertainty

Stress and health inequalities

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Structure of the day

9.00 REGISTRATION, REFRESHMENTS AND NETWORKING9.30 Welcome from Fuse9.35 Welcome from Event Chair and Aim of the Event9.45 Opening address10.00-10.40

Update on evidence 

11.00 REFRESHMENTS AND NETWORKING11.20-12.00

Hearing from local practice 

12.20 LUNCH AND NETWORKING13.15 Stress-relieving activity13.25 Keynote: Obesity, inequality and insecurity14.05 Panel discussion: potential for collaborative work 14.50 Next Steps15.00 CLOSE, REFRESHMENTS AND NETWORKING

WelcomeFuse Knowledge Exchange Seminar

North East England Health Summit: Inequalities-related Stress

Tweet during the event using the hashtags

#FuseKES and #inequalities

www.fuse.ac.uk