Mark Stafford
Biographic Data
| ID | 235145 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mark Stafford |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mark |
| FAMILY NAME | Stafford |
| SIGNATURE | STAFFORD M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8411-1653 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 67 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1046 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 67 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1983 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 16 |
Ethnic inequalities in age-related patterns of multiple long-term conditions in England
Little is known about the patterning of multiple long-term conditions (MLTCs) by age, ethnicity and across conceptualisations of MLTCs (e.g. MLTCs with/without mental health conditions [MHCs]). We examined ethnic inequalities in age-related patterns of MLTCs, and combinations of physical and MHCs using the English GP Patient Survey and Clinical Practice Research Datalink. We described the association between MLTCs and age using multilevel regress…
Socioeconomic gradient in mortality of working age and older adults with multiple long-term conditions in England and Ontario, Canada
Number of conditions contributes to higher mortality rate and socioeconomic inequalities in mortality in England and Ontario. Current health care systems are fragmented and do not compensate for socioeconomic disadvantages, contributing to poor outcomes particularly for those managing multiple long-term conditions. Further work should identify how health systems can better support patients and clinicians who are working to prevent the development…
Bi-directional associations between religious attendance and mental health
BACKGROUND: There is evidence that religious attendance is associated with positive outcomes for mental health; however, there are few longitudinal studies, and even fewer, which take into account the possibility of bi-directional associations. This study aimed to investigate bi-directional associations between religious attendance and mental health. METHODS: Participants were 2125 study members who provided data at age 68-69 from the Medical Res…
Childhood correlates of adult positive mental well-being in three British longitudinal studies
Background Previous evidence has shown how experiences within childhood, such as parenting and socioeconomic conditions, are associated later on in life with adult mental well-being. However, these studies tend to focus on childhood experiences in isolation, and fewer studies have investigated how multiple aspects of the childhood environment, including both socioeconomic and psychosocial aspects, are associated with adult positive mental well-be…
Social relationship adversities throughout the lifecourse and risk of loneliness in later life
Understanding how social experiences throughout life shape later loneliness levels may help to identify how to alleviate loneliness at later lifestages. This study investigates the association between social relationship adversities throughout the lifecourse and loneliness in later life. Using prospective data from the Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development (N = 2,453), we conducted multivariable analyses to investigat…
Variations of health check attendance in later life
A number of predisposing, enabling and need factors from childhood and adulthood were found to be associated with health check attendance at age 68, demonstrating the relevance of applying a life course perspective to Andersen's model in investigating health check attendance in later life. Health related factors were found to be stronger correlates of health check attendance than socioeconomic factors
Factors across life associated with remaining free from functional limitations despite lifelong exposure to socioeconomic adversity
BACKGROUND: There are substantial socioeconomic inequalities in functional limitations in old age. Resilience may offer new insights into these inequalities by identifying constellations of factors that protect some individuals from developing functional limitations despite socioeconomic adversity. METHODS: Data from 1973 participants in the Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development (Great Britain), followed from birth un…
Social support and trajectories of body mass index and waist to hip ratio from mid-adulthood to old age
Background Although social networks’ influence on obesity has been increasingly recognised, it remains unclear if different dimensions of social support, for example, emotional or practical support, received from one’s closest relationship are associated with weight outcomes over mid-life and old age. Methods Using linear mixed models we examined whether person-level body mass index (BMI) and waist to hip ratio (WHR) trajectories vary according t…
Linking local labour market conditions across the life course to retirement age
Work-Family Conflict and Work Exit in Later Career Stage
FIW makes women more likely to become a homemaker at later career stage but reduces the risk of leaving work for men, which may reinforce gender inequality in work participation
Changes in autonomy, job demands and working hours after diagnosis of chronic disease
BACKGROUND: Modifications in working conditions can accommodate changing needs of chronically ill persons. The self-employed may have more possibilities than employees to modify their working conditions. We investigate how working conditions change following diagnosis of chronic disease for employed and self-employed older persons. METHODS: We used waves 2-7 from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA). We included 1389 participants aged …
Prospective associations of psychosocial adversity in childhood with risk factors for cardiovascular disease in adulthood
We found no evidence that exposure to greater psychosocial adversity, or specific forms of psychosocial adversity during childhood is associated with adult CVD risk factors. Further large population studies are needed to clarify whether parental death is associated with higher systolic and diastolic blood pressure
Association between midlife health behaviours and transitions out of employment from midlife to early old age
Unhealthy behaviours in midlife are associated with transitions out of employment into old age. Promoting healthy behaviours at midlife might support current policy initiatives aimed at extending working life. Future research should consider possible mechanisms that link behaviours to transitions out of employment, and consider sex differences in larger cohorts
Joint Trajectories of Spousal Social Support and Depressive Symptoms in Older Age
Improving older couple's relationship quality may help reduce depressive symptoms
Do welfare regimes matter for oral health? A multilevel analysis of European countries
Modeling Exposure to Multiple Childhood Social Risk Factors and Physical Capability and Common Affective Symptoms in Later Life
The cumulative social risk approach and the use of factor analysis to identify contexts of social risk, may offer viable methods for linking multiple childhood social risk exposure to aging outcomes
The Association Between Informal Caregiving and Exit From Employment Among Older Workers
This study highlights the onset of caregiving as a key period for older workers. Ensuring that caregiving responsibilities are adequately recognized and supported may help extend working life
Work-Family Life Courses and Subjective Wellbeing in the MRC National Survey of Health and Development (the 1946 British birth cohort study)
Studies investigating the impact of combining paid work and family life on wellbeing have generally used information at one or a limited number of points in the life course, and have mainly focused on women. This study uses multi-channel sequence analysis to characterise work-family life courses across adulthood (ages 16-60) for more than 1500 men and women in the MRC National Study of Health and Development. Wellbeing at age 60-64 was captured b…
Health trajectories in regeneration areas in England
BACKGROUND: A large body of evidence documents the adverse relationship between concentrated deprivation and health. Among the evaluations of regeneration initiatives to tackle these spatial inequalities, few have traced the trajectories of individuals over time and fewer still have employed counterfactual comparison. We investigate the impact of one such initiative in England, the New Deal for Communities (NDC), which ran from 1999 to 2011, on s…
Parental separation and adult psychological distress
This study begins to disentangle the mechanisms between parental separation in childhood and adult psychological distress. Interventions which aim to support children through education, in particular, are likely to be particularly beneficial for later psychological health
Neighborhood socioeconomic deprivation, perceived neighborhood factors, and cortisol responses to induced stress among healthy adults
Evaluating the health inequalities impact of area-based initiatives across the socioeconomic spectrum
BACKGROUND: Previous evaluations of area-based initiatives have not compared intervention areas with the full range of areas from top to bottom of the social spectrum to evaluate their health inequalities impact. SETTING: Deprived areas subject to the New Deal for Communities (NDC) intervention, local deprivation-matched comparator areas, and areas drawn from across the socioeconomic spectrum (representing high, medium and low deprivation) in Eng…
The effects of socioeconomic incongruity in the neighbourhood on social support, self-esteem and mental health in England
OP57 The Contribution of Neighbourhoods and Schools to Cognitive Test Performance at Age Seven - Findings from the UK Millennium Cohort Study
Background The relevance of neighbourhoods for children’s cognitive development, while receiving increasing attention, is still subject to debate. One mechanism that has been proposed is via institutional resources such as schools. Another hypothesis is that neighbourhood aspects influence maternal psychological well-being and parenting practices. However, the contribution of schools to the neighbourhood effect is understudied, and findings regar…
OP07 The Association between Socioeconomic Position and Longitudinal Adult Social Integration in a British Birth Cohort
Background The quantity and quality of an individual’s social relationships have been associated with health behaviours, healthcare utilisation and health outcomes. The Public Health and Health and Social Care Outcomes Frameworks include social isolation indicators but do not explicitly consider socioeconomic patterning. Observational studies suggest that social network characteristics are socioeconomically patterned, with those with lower educat…
The Influence of Delinquent Peers
Although the association between delinquent friends and delinquent behavior is well established, the mechanism by which delinquency is socially transmitted remains unclear. Sutherlands theory of differential association holds that delinquency is a consequence of attitudes favorable to the violation of the law, attitudes that are acquired through intimate social interaction with peers. An analysis of data from the National Youth Survey indicates t…
Gender differences in the associations between health and neighbourhood environment
The buffering effects of ethnic density on experienced racism and health
Association Between Fear of Crime and Mental Health and Physical Functioning
Objectives. Studies have reported an inverse association between fear of crime and subjective mental and physical health. We investigated the direction of causality and the curtailment of physical and social activities as a possible mediating pathway. Methods. We analyzed data from 2002 to 2004 of the Whitehall II study, a longitudinal study of more than 10 000 London-based civil servants aged 35 to 55 years at baseline. Results. Fear of crime wa…
Fear of Victimization
Research on fear of victimization continues to overlook the proximate causes of fear, relying instead on tacit and untested assumptions about those causes. For example, it is widely accepted that Americans are most afraid of violent or personal crimes, as if the perceived seriousness of offenses were the only determinant of fear. Were that true, fear would almost certainly be immutable (how does one reduce the perceived seriousness of crimes?). D…
How do objective and subjective assessments of neighbourhood influence social and physical functioning in older age? Findings from a British survey of ageing
Composition, Concentration and Deprivation
Although studies in the US have shown an association between the ethnic residential composition of an area and reports of decreased social cohesion among its residents, this association is not clear in the UK, and particularly for ethnic minority groups. The current study analyses a merged dataset from the 2005 and 2007 Citizenship Survey to assess the evidence for an association between social cohesion and ethnic residential concentration, compo…
A multilevel analysis of social capital and self-rated health
Pathways to obesity
The impact of socioeconomic status on health functioning as assessed by the SF-36 questionnaire
OBJECTIVES: This study measured the association between socioeconomic status and the eight scale scores of the Medical Outcomes Study short form 36 (SF-36) general health survey in the Whitehall II study of British civil servants. It also assessed, for the physical functioning scale, whether this association was independent of disease. METHODS: A questionnaire containing the SF-36 was administered at the third phase of the study to 5766 men and 2…
Neighbourhood environment and its association with self rated health
Objectives: To investigate associations between measures of neighbourhood social and material environment and self rated health. Design: New contextual measures added to cross sectional study of a sample of people from the Health Survey for England and the Scottish Health Survey to provide multilevel data. Participants: 13 899 men and women aged 16 or over for whom data on self rated health were available from the Health Survey for England (years…
Measuring the Social Environment
Despite increasing interest in macrosocial determinants of health, progress has been hampered by a lack of information on contextual factors and a lack of clarity in defining aspects of the social environment which may be important. A theoretical and empirical approach to measuring social cohesion in neighbourhoods in England and Scotland is described. Some forms of social networks, such as contact with friends and participation in organised grou…
Public Health and Fear of Crime
Public insecurities about crime are widely assumed to erode individual well-being and community cohesion. Yet robust evidence on the link between worry about crime and health is surprisingly scarce. This paper draws on data from a prospective cohort study (the Whitehall II study) to show a strong statistical effect of mental health and physical functioning on worry about crime. Combining with existing evidence, we suggest a feedback model where w…
Examining the differential association between self-rated health and area deprivation among white British and ethnic minority people in England
Neighbourhood social capital and common mental disorder
Small area inequalities in health
Positive and Negative Exchanges in Social Relationships as Predictors of Depression
Negative and positive exchanges with partners and children appear equally salient for depression onset although negative exchanges with family and friends contribute to depression whereas positive exchanges do not
Neighbourhoods and self rated health
Study objective: Mortality and morbidity vary across neighbourhoods and larger residential areas. Effects of area deprivation on health may vary across countries, because of greater spatial separation of people occupying high and low socioeconomic positions and differences in the provision of local services and facilities. Neighbourhood variations in health and the contribution of residents’ characteristics and neighbourhood indicators were compa…
Characterising socio-economic inequalities in exposure to air pollution
Lifetime Socioeconomic Inequalities in Physical and Cognitive Aging
Objectives. We examined the relationship between childhood and adult socioeconomic position (SEP) and objectively assessed, later-life functioning. Methods. We used the Medical Research Council’s National Survey of Health and Development data to examine performance at 60 to 64 years (obtained in 2006–2011) for a representative UK sample. We compared 9 physical and cognitive performance measures (forced expiratory volume, forced vital capacity, ha…
Fear of racism, employment and expected organizational racism
This study highlights variations in the types of racial discrimination most commonly reported across different socio-demographic characteristics. Despite substantial differences in the experience of racial discrimination, the detrimental impact of racism on health was the same across socio-demographic groups
Characteristics of individuals and characteristics of areas
Work-Family Life Courses and Subjective Wellbeing in the MRC National Survey of Health and Development (the 1946 British birth cohort study)
Studies investigating the impact of combining paid work and family life on wellbeing have generally used information at one or a limited number of points in the life course, and have mainly focused on women. This study uses multi-channel sequence analysis to characterise work-family life courses across adulthood (ages 16-60) for more than 1500 men and women in the MRC National Study of Health and Development. Wellbeing at age 60-64 was captured b…
Neighborhood socioeconomic deprivation, perceived neighborhood factors, and cortisol responses to induced stress among healthy adults
The Association Between Informal Caregiving and Exit From Employment Among Older Workers
This study highlights the onset of caregiving as a key period for older workers. Ensuring that caregiving responsibilities are adequately recognized and supported may help extend working life
Fear of Victimization
Research on fear of victimization continues to overlook the proximate causes of fear, relying instead on tacit and untested assumptions about those causes. For example, it is widely accepted that Americans are most afraid of violent or personal crimes, as if the perceived seriousness of offenses were the only determinant of fear. Were that true, fear would almost certainly be immutable (how does one reduce the perceived seriousness of crimes?). D…
The Influence of Delinquent Peers
Although the association between delinquent friends and delinquent behavior is well established, the mechanism by which delinquency is socially transmitted remains unclear. Sutherlands theory of differential association holds that delinquency is a consequence of attitudes favorable to the violation of the law, attitudes that are acquired through intimate social interaction with peers. An analysis of data from the National Youth Survey indicates t…
Is the SF-36 a valid measure of change in population health? Results from the Whitehall II study
Objective: To measure within-person change in scores on the short form general health survey (SF-36) by age, sex, employment grade, and disease status. Design: Longitudinal study with a mean of 36 months (range 23–59 months) follow up, with screening examination and questionnaire to detect physical and psychiatric morbidity. Setting: 20 civil service departments originally located in London. Participants: 5070 male and 2197 female office based ci…
The impact of socioeconomic status on health functioning as assessed by the SF-36 questionnaire
OBJECTIVES: This study measured the association between socioeconomic status and the eight scale scores of the Medical Outcomes Study short form 36 (SF-36) general health survey in the Whitehall II study of British civil servants. It also assessed, for the physical functioning scale, whether this association was independent of disease. METHODS: A questionnaire containing the SF-36 was administered at the third phase of the study to 5766 men and 2…
Behavioural and biological correlates of physical functioning in middle aged office workers
STUDY OBJECTIVES: (1) To identify behavioural and biological correlates of poor physical functioning and (2) to determine whether such associations are independent of disease. DESIGN: Potential correlates were obtained from questionnaires and screening visits at baseline and five year follow up. Physical functioning was measured at follow up using the 10 item scale from the short-form 36 health survey. SETTING: London offices at baseline. PARTICI…
Characteristics of individuals and characteristics of areas
Neighbourhood deprivation and health
BACKGROUND: Neighbourhood socioeconomic status (SES) may affect rich and poor residents differentially. Two models are proposed. Model 1: living in a non-deprived neighbourhood is better for health because better collective material and social resources are available. Model 2: being poor (rich) relative to the neighbourhood average is associated with worse (better) health because of the discrepancy between an individual's situation and those arou…
Measuring the Social Environment
Despite increasing interest in macrosocial determinants of health, progress has been hampered by a lack of information on contextual factors and a lack of clarity in defining aspects of the social environment which may be important. A theoretical and empirical approach to measuring social cohesion in neighbourhoods in England and Scotland is described. Some forms of social networks, such as contact with friends and participation in organised grou…
Neighbourhoods and self rated health
Study objective: Mortality and morbidity vary across neighbourhoods and larger residential areas. Effects of area deprivation on health may vary across countries, because of greater spatial separation of people occupying high and low socioeconomic positions and differences in the provision of local services and facilities. Neighbourhood variations in health and the contribution of residents’ characteristics and neighbourhood indicators were compa…
Neighbourhood environment and its association with self rated health
Objectives: To investigate associations between measures of neighbourhood social and material environment and self rated health. Design: New contextual measures added to cross sectional study of a sample of people from the Health Survey for England and the Scottish Health Survey to provide multilevel data. Participants: 13 899 men and women aged 16 or over for whom data on self rated health were available from the Health Survey for England (years…
Gender differences in the associations between health and neighbourhood environment
Neighbourhood social capital and common mental disorder
Association Between Fear of Crime and Mental Health and Physical Functioning
Objectives. Studies have reported an inverse association between fear of crime and subjective mental and physical health. We investigated the direction of causality and the curtailment of physical and social activities as a possible mediating pathway. Methods. We analyzed data from 2002 to 2004 of the Whitehall II study, a longitudinal study of more than 10 000 London-based civil servants aged 35 to 55 years at baseline. Results. Fear of crime wa…
Deterrence Theory
Deterrence theory can be traced to such early utilitarians as Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham (Johnson & Wolfe 2003). The underlying idea is that people will commit crimes to the extent they are more pleasurable than painful. Certain, severe, and swift legal punishments increase the pain for crimes and, thereby, can deter people from committing them
Pathways to obesity
How do objective and subjective assessments of neighbourhood influence social and physical functioning in older age? Findings from a British survey of ageing
The buffering effects of ethnic density on experienced racism and health
Identifying Urban Flashpoints
Although great strides have been made toward forecasting state-level instability, little progress has been made toward the prediction of outbreaks of urban unrest. This article presents a method for the assessment of cities’ vulnerability to large-scale urban unrest. Forty-five factors correlated with urban unrest are identified and weighted by an expert panel. Based on expert elicitation through an iterative Delphi exercise, the explicitly metho…
Tackling inequalities in health
OBJECTIVE: To assess health improvement and differential changes in health across various sociodemographic groups in neighbourhood renewal areas. DESIGN AND SETTING: A longitudinal survey of 10,390 residents in New Deal for Communities (NDC) areas and 977 residents in comparator areas in England. Measures and methods: Changes on several outcomes across five domains (health, unemployment, education, crime and the physical environment) were assesse…
Small area inequalities in health
Public Health and Fear of Crime
Public insecurities about crime are widely assumed to erode individual well-being and community cohesion. Yet robust evidence on the link between worry about crime and health is surprisingly scarce. This paper draws on data from a prospective cohort study (the Whitehall II study) to show a strong statistical effect of mental health and physical functioning on worry about crime. Combining with existing evidence, we suggest a feedback model where w…
Fear of racism, employment and expected organizational racism
This study highlights variations in the types of racial discrimination most commonly reported across different socio-demographic characteristics. Despite substantial differences in the experience of racial discrimination, the detrimental impact of racism on health was the same across socio-demographic groups
A multilevel analysis of social capital and self-rated health
Parental separation and psychological distress in early adulthood
Background An association between parental separation occurring during childhood and psychological distress has been shown many times. UK divorce rates have increased rapidly since the mid-twentieth century. The “reduced effect hypothesis” suggests that the effect of parental separation may have reduced over time as separation has become more common and consequently less stigmatising. Previous studies have looked at this using outcomes of educati…
P22 Childhood socioeconomic position and adult smoking
Background Studies have shown that childhood socioeconomic position (SEP) is related to smoking in adulthood, independent of adult SEP. Educational attainment partially mediates this association; however, previous studies suggest three childhood factors which may also be important-childhood cognitive ability, psychosocial adjustment and parental involvement. Objective To assess whether childhood psychosocial adjustment, cognitive ability and pare…
Medicine (56 works) · Health disparities and outcomes (43 works) · Psychology (42 works) · Gerontology (40 works) · Demography (39 works) · Population (28 works) · Sociology (28 works) · Environmental health (26 works) · Gerontology (24 works) · Demography (23 works)