Programme Director

Hilary Graham
Research areas:
Policy influences ; Research and Professional Development

Career details
Hilary Graham is Professor of Social Policy at Lancaster University and has a background in sociology and social policy.

After working for her PhD at the University of York in the 1970s, she moved to the University of Bradford as a Lecturer in Social Policy and followed this with a research post in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University, before taking up the post of Head of the Applied Social Studies Department at Coventry Polytechnic (now Coventry University) in the mid 1980s. She was appointed to the Chair of Applied Social Studies at the University of Warwick in 1988, a post held until 1996. During this period, she had a one-year ESRC Senior Research Fellowship, at the MRC Medical Sociology Unit in Glasgow. She moved to Lancaster University in 1996 to head up the ESRC's Health Variations Programme. Her Directorship ended with the completion of the Programme in 2001. She is based in the Department of Applied Social Science and is a member of the Institute for Women's Studies and the Institute for Health Research.

Hilary Graham has contributed to both research and policy development in the area of health and inequality. On the research front, she has served on three Research Assessment Exercises. She was a member of the Social Work and the Social Policy Panel of the 1989 Research Selectivity Exercise and of the 1992 and 1996 Research Assessment Exercises. She is also playing a lead role on the European Science Foundation (ESF) Program on Social Variations in Health Expectancy (1999-2003) and is a member of the MRC's Health Services and Public Health Research Board (2000-04).

On the policy front, she was a member of the Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health, chaired by Sir Donald Acheson. The Inquiry was established by the Minister for Health in 1997 to review the evidence on class inequalities in health and to make recommendations for policies to address them. The Report of the Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health was published in November 1998 (The Stationery Office) and has helped to inform the UK's new public health strategy. She is also a member of the NHS Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation (ACRA).

Her research and teaching have focused on how inequalities of class and gender shape women's lives and women's health. The impact of poverty and the experience of caring for children have been central themes, explored through studies - qualitative and quantitative - in two related areas: women's smoking and socio-economic inequalities in health. She has conducted research for the Department of Health, the Economic and Social Research Council and the Health Education Authority (now called the Health Development Agency). Her published work includes Hardship and Health in Women's Lives (1993), When Life is a Drag: Women, Smoking and Disadvantage (1993) and the edited collection Understanding Health Inequalities (2000).

Publications
Books :single-authored

When Life's A Drag: Women, Smoking and Disadvantage, HMSO, London, 1993, pp117.
Hardship and Health in Women's Lives
, Harvester Wheatsheaf, London, 1993, pp221.

Health and Welfare
, Macmillan, London, 1985, pp147.

Women, Health and the Family, Wheatsheaf Books, Brighton, 1984, pp 207 (reprinted 1985).
Books :edited and contributory author
Hilary Graham (ed) Understanding Health Inequalities, Open University Press, Buckingham, 2000, pp227 (reprinted 2001).
Contributory author to Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health (1998) Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health Report, The Stationery Office, London, pp164.
Journal articles from 1995
Hilary Graham 'Building an interdisciplinary science of health inequalities: the example of lifecourse research' Social Science & Medicine (in press)
'Understanding health inequalities', MIDIRS Midwifery Digest, June (2000), 10,2: 144-148
Liz Batten, Hilary Graham, Sue High, Laurie Ruggiero and Joseph Rossi 'Stage of change, low income and benefit status: a profile of women's smoking in early pregnancy' Health Education Journal, 58 (1999) 378-88.
Hilary Graham and Geoff Der 'Patterns and predictors of tobacco consumption among women' Health Education Research, 14, 5 (1999) 611-18.
Hilary Graham and Geoff Der 'Patterns and predictors of smoking cessation among women' Health Promotion International, 14, 3 (1999) 231-39.
Hilary Graham and Geoff Der 'Influences on women's smoking status: the contribution of socio-economic status in adolescence and adulthood' European Journal of Public Health, 9, 2 (1999) 137-141.
'Promoting health against inequality' Health Education Journal, 57, 4 (1998) 292-302.
Hilary Graham and Kate Hunt 'Socio-economic influences on women's smoking in adulthood: insights from the West of Scotland Twenty-07 Study' Health Bulletin, 56, 4 (1998) 51-58.
Hilary Graham and Clare Blackburn 'The socio-economic patterning of health and smoking behaviour among mothers with young children on income support' Sociology of Health and Illness, 20, 2 (1998) 215-40.
Clare Blackburn, Hilary Graham and Philip Scullion 'Disseminating research findings on women's smoking to health practitioners: findings from an evaluation study' Health Education Journal, 56 (1997) 113-24.
'The health experiences of mothers and young children on income support' Benefits, 17 (1996) 11-13.
'Smoking prevalence among women in the European Community, 1950 to 1990', Social Science and Medicine, 43,2 (1996) 243-54.

'Cigarette smoking: a light on gender and class inequality in Britain?' Journal of Social Policy, 24, 3 (1995) 509-527.
'Breadline motherhood: trends and experiences in Ireland', Administration, 42, 4 (1995) 352-73.
'Diversity, inequality and official data: some problems of method and measurement', Health and Social Care in the Community, 3 (1995) 9-18.
Chapters in books from 1995 (single-authored unless otherwise indicated)
Andreas Mielck, Hilary Graham and Sven Brenberg, 'Targeting groups at risk: children' in J. Mackenbach and M. Bakker (eds) Tackling Inequalities in Health: the European Experience, Routledge, London, in press.
'Science into policy: options for reducing health inequalities', in D. Leon and G. Watt (eds) Poverty, Inequality and Health, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001, pp294-311).
'The challenge of health inequalities', in H. Graham (ed) Understanding Health Inequalities, Open University Press, Buckingham, 2000, pp3-21.
'Socio-economic change and inequalities in men and women's health' in E. Annandale and K. Hunt (eds.) Gender Inequalities in Health, Open University Press, Buckingham, 2000, pp90-122.
'Cigarette smoking and inequalities in health', in S. Waller, A. Crosier and D. McVey (eds) Inequalities in Health, Health Education Authority, London, 1999, pp101-10.
Hilary Graham, Michaela Benzeval and Margaret Whitehead 'Social-economic policies in the UK with a potential impact on health inequalities', in J. P. Mackenbach and M. Droomers (eds) Interventions and Policies to Reduce Inequalities in Health, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, 1999, pp149-66.
'Health inequalities research :observations on the UK experience', in B. Arve-Pares (ed) Promoting Research on Inequality in Health, Swedish Council for Social Research, Stockholm, 1998, pp 29-38.
'Health at risk: poverty and national health strategies', in L. Doyal (ed.) Women and Health Services: A Case for Change, Open University Press, Buckingham, 1998, pp22-38.
'Researching women's health work: a study of the lifestyles of mothers on income support', in P. Bywaters and E. McLeod (eds) Working for Equality in Health, Routledge, London, 1996 pp 161-178.
'Women, smoking and disadvantage', in K. Slama (ed) Tobacco and Health, proceedings of the 9th World Conference on Tobacco and Health, Plenum Press, 1995, pp 695-7.
Nick Spencer and Hilary Graham 'Children and poverty', in B. Lindstrom and N. Spencer (eds) Social Paediatrics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995, pp361-79.

 

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