INRICH Member Profile Card
Hannah Fairbrother
Health Sciences School, University of Sheffield
I am a Lecturer in Public Health in the Health Sciences School, University of Sheffield.
Type of member: Regular (since 2018)
Telephone: +44 (0)114 2222044
Email Address: h.fairbrother@sheffield.ac.uk
Website Address: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/health-sciences/people/nursing-and-midwifery/hannah-fairbrother
Mailing Address: Barber House Annexe, 3a Clarkehouse Road, Sheffield S10 2LA
Current research interests
My principal research focus is on socioeconomic inequalities in health, particularly as they relate to children, young people and families. This is a longstanding interest and stems from my upbringing in Sheffield, a city of contrasts in health and wealth, visiting family in Anfield, Liverpool and through voluntary work in Cambridge with young mothers and with children in a disadvantaged area of Paris.
I am particularly interested in:
- Work to understand and address the underlying causes of inequalities in health
- Public perspectives, particularly children and young people’s perspectives, on and understandings of inequalities in health and their relationship with broader societal inequalities
- The role of health and wider policy (a health in all policies approach) and the potential for whole systems approaches to facilitate coordinated action in reducing inequalities in health
- The importance of children and young people’s health literacy practices in making sense of, interacting with and responding to health information.
I mobilise a variety of different methods to explore these key interests, including critical policy analysis, systematic and narrative literature review, participatory interviews, creative workshops, observation and systems mapping.
Research priorities
Pathways and mechanisms: Cumulative and additive social risk exposures (e.g. transient v. persistent poverty). Intergenerational influences. | Methodological issues: Methods for examining change over time including longitudinal effects studies. Need to study social gradients as well as poverty. Multi-level studies - Society, Family & Individual. Regional studies (within countries).
Selected publications
Jessiman PE, Powell K, Williams P, Fairbrother H, Crowder M, Williams JG, Kipping R. (2021) A systems map of the determinants of child health inequalities in England at the local level. PLoS ONE 16(2): e0245577. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245577
Fairbrother H, Curtis P & Kirkcaldy A (2020) Children’s learning from a Smokefree Sports programme: Implications for health education. Health Education Journal, 79(6), 686-699. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0017896920907130
Fairbrother H, Curtis P & Goyder E (2016) Making health information meaningful: children's health literacy practices. SSM - Population Health, 2, 476-484 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352827316300349?via%3Dihub
profile updated: 03/12/2021