Lifecourse Podcast

In Episode Two of Series 2 of the Lifecourse Podcast from the we discus getting to grips with Multiple Sclerosis. Our guests are from Örebro University and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, who has been researching MS for more than 20 years. Helen Andrew, who has been diagnosed with MS and , senior research manager at the .   Further reading: Review of research on MS on the ICLS Child of our Time blog – by Scott Montgomery. is research by Kelsi A Smith, Sarah Burkill, Ayako Hiyoshi, Tomas Olsson, Shahram Bahmanyar, David Wormser, Yvonne Geissbuhler, Alan Moore, Vineetkumar Kharat and Scott Montgomery. is research by Kelsi A Smith, Ayako Hiyoshi, Sarah Burkill, Shahram Bahmanyar, Johan Öckinger, Lars Alfredsson, Tomas Olsson and Scott Montgomery. is research by Scott Montgomery, Ayako Hiyoshi, Sarah Burkill, Lars Alfredsson, Shahram Bahmanyar and Tomas Olsson.

In Episode One of Series 2 of the Lifecourse Podcast, Dr Thierry Gagné from the and Cynthia Callard, Executive Director at discuss a body of new research on smoking and vaping in Canada published in a special issue journal.  is Part 1 of a Special Issue of the Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention in Canada Journal edited by Jennifer O'Loughlin and Thierry Gagné.  is an editorial written by Jennifer O'Loughlin and Thierry Gagné on Part 1 of the special issue.  

In this episode of the Lifecourse Podcast from the ESRC International Centre for life course studies at UCL Dr Baowen Xue and Professor Anne McMunn discuss how they used specially collected COVID19 data to look at how couples divided up housework, childcare and homeschooling during lockdown, who was most likely to change their work pattern and the impact on mental health.  Further information  

In this episode of The Lifecourse Podcast, Professor Amanda Sacker and Dr Emily Murray discuss their research looking at the long term consequences on a person’s health from a childhood spent in care.  Further reading   

Sonia Livingstone from the London School of Economics discusses the research behind her new book, She explains how she and co-researcher Alicia Blum-Ross gained access to the homes and lives of parents keen to share their hopes,  fears and experiences of parenting in the digital age and offers new important insights for policymakers, educators, and researchers keen to understand how parents and families can be best supported around the use of new technologies in a digital world.

Snehal Pinto Pereira from ICLS discusses her  in the International Journal of Epidemiology looking at the links between obesity across childhood into adulthood and their ability to manage daily physical tasks later on in life.  is research by Snehal M Pinto Pereira, Bianca L De Stavola, Nina T Rogers, Rebecca Hardy, Rachel Cooper, Chris Power.

Thierry Gagné from ICLS discusses with Ingrid School and Amanda Sacker exploring the links between voter turnout and health.    The research, which made use of data from the 1958 and 1970 Birth Cohorts, showed that compared with people in good health, those who said they were in fair health had 15% and 18% lower odds of voting whilst those in poor or worse health had 17% and 32% lower odds of voting.

In a special episode of the Lifecourse Podcast, guest host UCL PhD student Emma Walker discusses young people's social media use and their mental health. Her guests are undergraduate students, Loes Wal, Kritika Rai and Alyson Ong. With support from ICLS and the National Literacy Trust they put on a workshop for 50 schoolchildren discussing their thoughts and attitudes about their social media use and research from Professor Yvonne Kelly showing a link between heavy social media use and increased depressive symptoms.  Read the full research paper Read a blog by Yvonne Kelly about the research  Read a blog for the Royal Society for Public Health from Emma Walker  National Literacy Trust 

Jean Twenge, Professor of Psychology at San Diego State University discusses her research on the links between heavy social media and screen use and increased levels of depression and anxiety among young people in the US and the UK.

Cath Mercer from University College London and Clare Tanton from the London School of Health and Tropical Medicine discuss research looking at the intimate encounters of 14 year-olds in the Millennium Cohort Study and what it tells us about helping to set young people on a positive path to happy, healthy relationships.

Nina Rogers from the ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies at UCL discusses her research published in the Journals of Gerontology looking at cultural engagement as a possible risk-reducing factor for frailty.

It seems young people are drinking less alcohol than they used to. Research published in the BMC Public Health Journal shows that almost a third of 16 to 24-year-olds in 2015 said they didn't drink, compared with around one in five in 2005. In this episode of the Lifecourse Podcast, Dr Linda Ng Fat from the Department for Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London, explains more about the research.

In this episode of The Lifecourse Podcast, CEO of the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) Shirley Cramer and Professor Yvonne Kelly from the ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies at UCL discuss the negative effects of heavy social media use on young people's mental health and happiness. They also talk about the RSPH #ScrollFreeSeptember campaign and the All Party Parliamentary Inquiry into the issue.

Heavy drinking and smoking, poor diet and a lack of physical activity have been shown to go hand in hand in adults from more disadvantaged backgrounds. But research from ICLS PhD student, Claire Mawditt, hints that, contrary to previous evidence, being disadvantaged as a pre-adolescent child is not in itself a predictor of those sorts of negative health behaviours later in life. In this episode of the Lifecourse Podcast she talks to Chris Garrington about the research and its implications for policy.

The Government recently announced that, after a review of the older person's bus pass, it would continue for the foreseeable future. Some of the evidence that fed into that review was produced by researchers Libby Webb (formerly ICLS now Age UK researcher) and Anthony Laverty from Imperial College London. In this episode of The Lifecourse Podcast, they discuss how their findings fed into the policy process and review of evidence that helped secure the future of the bus pass.

We are all being told we need to save harder and longer for our retirement. The State Pension isn’t enough to live on and so we all need to make provision for the day when we will no longer be earning or have access to a salary or a wage. For most of us, this means saving into a pension scheme - maybe one that our employer organises or something we arrange privately. But who exactly has a pension and what sort of background do they come from? In this episode of the Lifecourse Podcast, Professor David Blane discusses research looking to answer that question and discusses the ramifications for policymakers, employers and workers of the key findings. Further information Occupational pensions: a bridge between social class before and after labour market exit? is research by Myer Glickman (UCL), Mel Bartley (UCL) and David Blane (UCL and Imperial College) and is published as an ICLS Working Paper. Link to research: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/iehc/research/epidemiology-public-health/research/international-centre-for-

The British Birth Cohort Studies are often described as ‘the jewel in the crown’ of British science. They are used on a daily basis by life course researchers at ICLS to try to better understand how life gets under our skin and to help policy makers, practitioners and the public know when and how to act to help people live long, healthy and happy lives. In this episode of the Lifecourse Podcast, author of The Life Project and Nature Magazine’s Chief Features Editor, Helen Pearson talks about how the cohort studies have touched all our lives and reflects on ICLS research findings presented in the booklet, Never too early, Never too Late. www.ucl.ac.uk/icls/publications/booklets/N2EN2L

Being able to get out and about as we get older is important for our health and wellbeing. But what needs to be put in place at what point in our lives to help us achieve that? In this episode of The Lifecourse Podcast, Tarani Chandola talks about ICLS research presented in a new booklet Never too Early, Never too Late, which shows some of the factors linked to an active and healthy life in older age.

In this episode of The Lifecourse Podcast, Morten Wahrendorf discuss the link between the quality of midlife work and the uptake of volunteering during retirement. His research uses data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) which is a multidisciplinary and cross-national panel database of micro data on health, socio-economic status and social and family networks of approximately 110,000 individuals from 20 European countries (+Israel) aged 50 or older.

There is growing evidence that unemployment is linked to long term illness and increased mortality. In this episode of The Lifecourse Podcast, Amanda Hughes discusses the findings from her research on the links between unemployment and killer diseases such as heart disease.