Rebecca Bentley
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 368693 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Rebecca Bentley |
| PRENOMES | Rebecca |
| SOBRENOME | Bentley |
| ASSINATURA | BENTLEY R |
| AFILIAÇÕES | The University of Melbourne |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3334-7353 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 67 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 387 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 67 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2006 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 12 |
Health-promoting housing policy in a changing climate
Housing is a fundamental determinant of health, yet many housing systems fail to promote well-being or address growing challenges such as climate change, inequality, and urbanization. It is increasingly treated as an investment vehicle and as a commercial product supporting the construction industry, with substantial interactions with climate change, rather than its fundamental role providing shelter. This perspective addresses this gap by propos…
Rent increases and mental health among low-income renters in Australia
Regulation of within-tenancy rent increases is weak in Australia. While links between unaffordable and insecure housing and poor mental health have been established, the mental health burden of landlord-imposed rent increases - which represent a specific type of housing shock - has not been examined empirically. We used fixed-effects regression analyses of 9808 observations (from 3604 individuals) to investigate the relationship between within-te…
Housing careers, housing pathways and young people in developed economies
The housing careers of young people provide significant insight into the housing system they enter – its opportunities and limitations. There is a strong history of work in housing studies to understand the progress of individuals through the housing market. This paper assesses the value of housing careers and housing pathways as analytical devices at a time when uncertainty marks young people’s movement through the housing markets of developed e…
The effects of subsidies and regulatory contexts on precarious housing among low-income renters
This study examines the extent to which housing allowances and social housing protect against housing precarity experienced by low-income renters. By applying panel data modelling to Australian and UK data, we estimate how housing allowances and social housing affect low-income renters’ experience of housing stress, overcrowding, rent arrears and forced moves. We find that the design of rental subsidy programs and the regulatory context within wh…
Hoarding disorder, therapeutic jurisprudence and residential tenancy law
For many, home represents comfort and security. However, for renters living with hoarding disorder, stable housing is often at risk. Hoarding disorder is a chronic mental illness associated with significant public health risks to both communities and individuals across jurisdictions. Internationally, residential tenancy laws often address hoarding using blunt legal measures at odds with the treatment needs of people living with the condition, whi…
Climate-related healthy housing risk factors
The profound effects of climate change jeopardise the ability of housing to protect human health and wellbeing. Citizen science, with its potential for generating data and engaging individuals and communities in action, is an important addition to the suite of tools needed to prepare our housing for this reality. Our scoping review assessed how citizen science approaches have been used to identify and address climate-related housing risk factors …
Intimate Partner Support as a Critical Source of Social Support on Women’s Post-Trauma Mental Recovery
Exposure to traumatic events such as natural disasters and child loss is strongly linked to trauma- and stressor-related disorders. This study examined how different sources of social support relate to PTSD and prolonged grief disorder (PGD) symptoms among women who lost a child in an earthquake. A cross-sectional survey with structured interviews and standardized instruments was conducted among 226 participants. Clinically significant PGD sympto…
I Wish I Had a House Like This’ Reimaging Home
The relationship between refugee housing and well‐being extends beyond basic shelter, encompassing social, cultural and spatial dimensions. This study explores how housing is experienced and understood by former‐refugees not merely as a physical structure but as a site of meaning, identity and belonging. Drawing on Massey's relational theory of space and a multidimensional understanding of belonging, this research examines the housing aspirations…
Harnessing Capital
Housing and wellbeing
Housing experiences upon settlement can shape refugee mental health and wellbeing; however, little is known of how housing precarity evolves as refugees establish their new lives and how it affects their wellbeing. We use longitudinal data (Building a New Life in Australia, n = 2,399) over five years (2013-18) to identify refugee housing trajectories in relation to housing precarity (measured by unaffordability, unsuitability, and insecurity) and…
Urban density, household overcrowding and the spread of Covid-19 in Australian cities
The UN-Habitat World Cities Report 2020 highlighted that overcrowded housing, not urban density, is the major contributing factor to the spread of COVID-19. The relatively successful ability of densely populated cities such as Seoul, Singapore, Tokyo and New York City to manage virus spread supports this. We hypothesise that, given the complexity of the interaction between people and place, the relative contribution of density and crowding to the…
Housing Australian Children
Housing is a critical social determinant of children's health. While individual pathways between housing and health are well evidenced, there has been less attention on the co-occurrence of housing disadvantages. We aim to identify typologies of children's housing disadvantage and describe the health inequities they generate. A cross-sectional latent class analysis (LCA) was conducted on 4355 Australian children aged 4 to 5 years who participated…
Housing and mental health inequalities during Covid-19
The COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted people's mental health and wellbeing. Using a national dataset of >11,000 Australians collected before and during the first two years of the pandemic, this study examines housing and mental health effects of COVID-19, and the extent to which access to government income support (social security measures, crisis payments and wage subsidy), early superannuation withdrawal, mortgage and rent relief, and tenan…
Advancing a healthy housing policy agenda
A substantial international body of evidence links housing to health outcomes. In 2021, the World Health Organisation (WHO) evaluated a small selection of policies from its six geographic regions and found that, in Australia as in the rest of the world, existing healthy housing measures fall short of the systemic response required to address health impacts and inequities. This paper takes the novel step of applying Bacchi's (2009) 'What is the Pr…
Housing Vulnerability and Covid-19 Outbreaks
When communities face infectious disease outbreaks such as COVID-19, their resilience is largely dependent on their social vulnerability. Housing, which functions as a precipitator and outcome of vulnerability, needs to be considered in this context. Using geospatial data, we developed a housing vulnerability index which demonstrates that COVID-19 transmission hotspots in Melbourne are potentially related to where and how people live – which in t…
Green and blue spaces, Covid-19 lockdowns, and mental health
Australia experienced some of the world's longest and most stringent lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. While lockdown measures had consequences for mental health, investigation is lacking on the potential for green and blue space coverage within people's local environments to ameliorate the impact of lockdowns with varied lengths using longitudinal cohorts. This study examined the impact of lockdown durations on population mental health and…
Vulnerability and recovery
Extreme weather and climate-related disaster events are associated with a range of adverse health outcomes. People are not equally vulnerable to the adversity, experiencing varied patterns of long-term health trajectories in recovery depending on their vulnerabilities, capacities, and resiliencies. This study aims to identify latent mental and physical health trajectories and their associations with person- and place-based pre-disaster predictors…
Australian rental housing standards
A large proportion of Australia’s housing stock offered for private rental or socially let is of poor quality, which has implications for residents’ health and well-being. This problem has arisen from historically weak regulation of housing standards and under-investment in public housing services, both features of Australia’s neoliberal housing regime. In this paper, we reviewed the institutional contexts of two policy settings used to address p…
The total health gains and cost savings of eradicating cold housing in Australia
Housing inequality
Housing inequality is far more than a housing matter. To discover how housing inequality has been used across disciplines, and how this may inform future housing research, we performed a systematic scoping review. We found that housing inequality provides multiple understandings as well as a variety of uses, for example, as a measurement tool, a conceptual device, or as subject matter. To draw together useful lessons from this conceptually divers…
Housing affordability and mental health
Unaffordable housing has many dimensions, not least its far-reaching implications for mental health. Although the psycho-social effects of housing affordability stress are well documented there is a lack of research on their variation within or between cohorts who have shared experiences of housing (social generations). This article fills that gap by following 14,000 Australians in the national Household, Income and Labour Dynamics survey for 16-…
Between liminality and a new life in Australia
Housing and health
Recent crises have underscored the importance that housing has in sustaining good health and, equally, its potential to harm health. Considering this and building on Howden-Chapman’s early glossary of housing and health and the WHO Housing and Health Guidelines, this paper introduces a range of housing and health-related terms, reflecting almost 20 years of development in the field. It defines key concepts currently used in research, policy and p…
Understanding the mental health effects of instability in the private rental sector
Urban Social Housing Pathways
This paper presents a national analysis of urban housing pathways. Focussing on the social housing sector, we follow social housing tenants as they move into, out of, and remain in, the sector over 15 years. Utilising a linked actuarial dataset, the paper reveals a typology of pathways, and examines the relationship between housing pathways and the receipt of broader government welfare. We find that not only is there no one social housing pathway…
Housing affordability and mental health
The 'double precarity' of employment insecurity and unaffordable housing and its impact on mental health
Does gender modify associations between self rated health and the social and economic characteristics of local environments
Objectives: To examine whether area level socioeconomic disadvantage and social capital have different relations with women’s and men’s self rated health. Methods: The study used data from 15 112 respondents to the 1998 Tasmanian (Australia) healthy communities study (60% response rate) nested within 41 statistical local areas. Gender stratified analyses were conducted of the associations between the index of relative socioeconomic disadvantage (…
The Mental Health Effects of Housing Tenure
Housing tenure sits at the heart of much academic and policy literature across many post-industrial countries, and, while debate is often centred on promoting tenure choice, surprisingly little is known of the underlying ways that the tenure chosen can affect health. While population characteristics tend to vary between tenure types, this largely reflects the forces of broader social and economic selection into those tenures. This paper examines …
Housing affordability, tenure and mental health in Australia and the United Kingdom
This paper contributes insights into the role of tenure in modifying the relationship between housing affordability and health, using a cross-national comparison of similar post-industrial nations—Australia and the United Kingdom—with different tenure structures. The paper utilises longitudinal data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey and British Household Panel Survey to examine change in the mental health of indiv…
Neoliberalism, economic restructuring and policy change
Housing, employment and economic conditions in many nations have changed greatly over the past decades. This paper explores the ways in which changing housing markets, economic conditions and government policies have affected vulnerable individuals and households, using Australia as a case study. The paper finds a substantial number and proportion of low income Australians have been affected by housing and employment that is insecure with profoun…
Housing tenure and affordability and mental health following disability acquisition in adulthood
Cumulative exposure to poor housing affordability and its association with mental health in men and women
BACKGROUND: Poor housing affordability affects around 10% of the Australian population and is increasingly prevalent. The authors tested two hypotheses: that cumulative exposure to housing affordability stress (HAS) is associated with poorer mental health and that effects vary by gender. METHODS: The authors estimated the relationship between cumulative exposure to HAS and mental health among 15478 participants in an Australian longitudinal surve…
Housing inequality
Housing inequality is far more than a housing matter. To discover how housing inequality has been used across disciplines, and how this may inform future housing research, we performed a systematic scoping review. We found that housing inequality provides multiple understandings as well as a variety of uses, for example, as a measurement tool, a conceptual device, or as subject matter. To draw together useful lessons from this conceptually divers…
Understanding the mental health effects of instability in the private rental sector
New evidence on mental health and housing affordability in cities
Individual and area-level socioeconomic associations with fast food purchasing
BACKGROUND: It has been suggested that those with lower socioeconomic characteristics would be more likely to seek energy-dense food options such as fast food because of cheaper prices; however, to date the evidence has been inconsistent. This study examines both individual- and area-level socioeconomic characteristics and their independent associations with chain-brand fast food purchasing. METHODS: Data from the 2003 Victorian Lifestyle and Nei…
Socioeconomic position, gender, health behaviours and biomarkers of cardiovascular disease and diabetes
Examining associations between area-level spatial measures of housing with selected health and wellbeing behaviours and outcomes in an urban context
Fruit and vegetable purchasing and the relative density of healthy and unhealthy food stores
BACKGROUND: Evidence of a relationship between residential retail food environments and diet-related outcomes is inconsistent. One reason for this may be that food environments are typically defined in terms of the absolute number of particular store types in an area, whereas a measure of the relative number of healthy and unhealthy stores may be more appropriate. METHODS: Using cross-sectional data from the VicLANES study conducted in Melbourne,…
An Australian geography of unhealthy housing
Housing problems, such as affordability, poor quality of condition, or damp, are key determinants of health and wellbeing. Importantly, though, a growing body of research has shown that unhealthy housing is the combined result of multiple housing problems acting together. Although the spatial distribution of discrete housing problems is well established, little is known of Australia's geography of unhealthy housing. We have previously defined and…
Precariously placed
Access to adequate, safe, secure, accessible and affordable housing is a fundamental human right and one stipulated in the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Australian adults with disabilities experience housing disadvantage including homelessness, poor-quality housing and housing unaffordability; however, we lack a comprehensive comparison of the housing circumstances of people with and without disabilities a…
Employment status and mental health among persons with and without a disability
BACKGROUND: Unemployment and economic inactivity are associated with worse mental health in the general population, but there is limited understanding of whether these relationships are different for those persons with mental or physical disabilities. The aim of this study was to assess whether there were differences in mental health by labour force status among persons with and without disabilities. METHOD: Over eight annual waves of the Househo…
Regional variation in social isolation amongst older Australians
Regional studies globally has a strong focus on understanding the causes of variation in the economic performance and well-being of regions and this emphasis acknowledges that the strength of the local or regional economy plays a determinant role in shaping quality of life. Regional research has been less active in considering spatial variation in other factors that are critical to individual and societal well-being. For example, the regional stu…
Men's work, Women's work, and mental health
Between liminality and a new life in Australia
Young maternal age at first birth and mental health later in life
Vulnerability and recovery
Extreme weather and climate-related disaster events are associated with a range of adverse health outcomes. People are not equally vulnerable to the adversity, experiencing varied patterns of long-term health trajectories in recovery depending on their vulnerabilities, capacities, and resiliencies. This study aims to identify latent mental and physical health trajectories and their associations with person- and place-based pre-disaster predictors…
The total health gains and cost savings of eradicating cold housing in Australia
Housing and health
Recent crises have underscored the importance that housing has in sustaining good health and, equally, its potential to harm health. Considering this and building on Howden-Chapman’s early glossary of housing and health and the WHO Housing and Health Guidelines, this paper introduces a range of housing and health-related terms, reflecting almost 20 years of development in the field. It defines key concepts currently used in research, policy and p…
Does gender modify associations between self rated health and the social and economic characteristics of local environments
Objectives: To examine whether area level socioeconomic disadvantage and social capital have different relations with women’s and men’s self rated health. Methods: The study used data from 15 112 respondents to the 1998 Tasmanian (Australia) healthy communities study (60% response rate) nested within 41 statistical local areas. Gender stratified analyses were conducted of the associations between the index of relative socioeconomic disadvantage (…
Gender equity and women's contraception use
Gender equity describes the distribution between men and women of social and material resources and decision‐making powers. Women's experiences of gender equity are likely to influence their contraceptive use. Multilevel analysis of two databases: the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles from the United Kingdom and the United Nations' Fertility and Family Surveys, was undertaken to explore the association between gender equity measu…
Walking
Gender has been neglected in models of the social determinants of health. We use walking as a case study to demonstrate how gender might be incorporated into multilevel social determinants of health frameworks to investigate health behaviours. We found that while men and women had some similar individual (e.g. confidence in doing regular physical activity) and environmental (e.g. presence of destinations) predictors of walking there were also gen…
Social capital and health in rural and urban communities in South Australia
A multilevel study of area socio-economic status and food purchasing behaviour
Objective The present study examined the association between area socio-economic status (SES) and food purchasing behaviour. Design Data were collected by mail survey (64·2 % response rate). Area SES was indicated by the proportion of households in each area earning less than $AUS 400 per week, and individual-level socio-economic position was measured using education, occupation and household income. Food purchasing was measured on the basis of c…
Local environments as determinants of walking in Melbourne, Australia
Socioeconomic position, gender, health behaviours and biomarkers of cardiovascular disease and diabetes
Association Between Housing Affordability and Mental Health
Evidence about the mental health consequences of unaffordable housing is limited. The authors investigated whether people whose housing costs were more than 30% of their household income experienced a deterioration in their mental health (using the Short Form 36 Mental Component Summary), over and above other forms of financial stress. They hypothesized that associations would be limited to lower income households as high housing costs would redu…
Reduced food access due to a lack of money, inability to lift and lack of access to a car for food shopping
Objective To describe associations between demographic and individual and area-level socio-economic variables and restricted household food access due to lack of money, inability to lift groceries and lack of access to a car to do food shopping. Design Multilevel study of three measures of restricted food access, i.e. running out of money to buy food, inability to lift groceries and lack of access to a car for food shopping. Multilevel logistic r…
Individual and area-level socioeconomic associations with fast food purchasing
BACKGROUND: It has been suggested that those with lower socioeconomic characteristics would be more likely to seek energy-dense food options such as fast food because of cheaper prices; however, to date the evidence has been inconsistent. This study examines both individual- and area-level socioeconomic characteristics and their independent associations with chain-brand fast food purchasing. METHODS: Data from the 2003 Victorian Lifestyle and Nei…
P1-187 Access to alcohol outlets and harmful alcohol consumption
Introduction While developed countries have either introduced, or are considering, legislation to restrict the number of alcohol outlets, there is little evidence to support this strategy except in the USA. Methods Multilevel study of 2334 adults aged 18 to 75 years from 49 census collector districts (the smallest spatial unit in Australia at the time of survey) in Melbourne, Australia. Alcohol outlet density was defined as the number of outlets …
Cumulative exposure to poor housing affordability and its association with mental health in men and women
BACKGROUND: Poor housing affordability affects around 10% of the Australian population and is increasingly prevalent. The authors tested two hypotheses: that cumulative exposure to housing affordability stress (HAS) is associated with poorer mental health and that effects vary by gender. METHODS: The authors estimated the relationship between cumulative exposure to HAS and mental health among 15478 participants in an Australian longitudinal surve…
Time trends in socio-economic inequalities for women and men with disabilities in Australia
People with disabilities experience high levels of socio-economic disadvantage which has increased or persisted over time and these are likely to translate into poorer health outcomes. A large proportion experience multiple forms of disadvantage, reinforcing the need to tackle disadvantage in a coordinated way across sectors.People with disabilities should be a priority population group for public health. Monitoring socio-economic conditions of p…
Fruit and vegetable purchasing and the relative density of healthy and unhealthy food stores
BACKGROUND: Evidence of a relationship between residential retail food environments and diet-related outcomes is inconsistent. One reason for this may be that food environments are typically defined in terms of the absolute number of particular store types in an area, whereas a measure of the relative number of healthy and unhealthy stores may be more appropriate. METHODS: Using cross-sectional data from the VicLANES study conducted in Melbourne,…
The Mental Health Effects of Housing Tenure
Housing tenure sits at the heart of much academic and policy literature across many post-industrial countries, and, while debate is often centred on promoting tenure choice, surprisingly little is known of the underlying ways that the tenure chosen can affect health. While population characteristics tend to vary between tenure types, this largely reflects the forces of broader social and economic selection into those tenures. This paper examines …
Housing affordability and mental health
Employment status and mental health among persons with and without a disability
BACKGROUND: Unemployment and economic inactivity are associated with worse mental health in the general population, but there is limited understanding of whether these relationships are different for those persons with mental or physical disabilities. The aim of this study was to assess whether there were differences in mental health by labour force status among persons with and without disabilities. METHOD: Over eight annual waves of the Househo…
Associations between the purchase of healthy and fast foods and restrictions to food access
Objective To examine the associations between financial, physical and transport conditions that may restrict food access (which we define as food security indicators) and the purchase of fast foods and nutritious staples such as bread and milk. Design Multilevel logistic and multinomial regression analysis of cross-sectional survey data to assess associations between the three indicators of food insecurity and household food shopping adjusted for…
Housing affordability and residential mobility as drivers of locational inequality
Does employment security modify the effect of housing affordability on mental health
This paper uses longitudinal data to examine the interrelationship between two central social determinants of mental health - employment security and housing affordability. Data from ten annual waves of the longitudinal Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey (which commenced in 2000/1 and is ongoing) were analysed using fixed-effects longitudinal linear regression. Change in the SF-36 Mental Component Summary (MCS) scor…
Inequalities in socio-economic characteristics and health and wellbeing of men with and without disabilities
Adult men with disabilities experience marked social and economic disadvantage and poorer health and wellbeing. Improving the health and wellbeing of disabled men should be a priority for public health researchers and policy-makers
Examining associations between area-level spatial measures of housing with selected health and wellbeing behaviours and outcomes in an urban context
Housing affordability, tenure and mental health in Australia and the United Kingdom
This paper contributes insights into the role of tenure in modifying the relationship between housing affordability and health, using a cross-national comparison of similar post-industrial nations—Australia and the United Kingdom—with different tenure structures. The paper utilises longitudinal data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey and British Household Panel Survey to examine change in the mental health of indiv…
Neoliberalism, economic restructuring and policy change
Housing, employment and economic conditions in many nations have changed greatly over the past decades. This paper explores the ways in which changing housing markets, economic conditions and government policies have affected vulnerable individuals and households, using Australia as a case study. The paper finds a substantial number and proportion of low income Australians have been affected by housing and employment that is insecure with profoun…
Regional variation in social isolation amongst older Australians
Regional studies globally has a strong focus on understanding the causes of variation in the economic performance and well-being of regions and this emphasis acknowledges that the strength of the local or regional economy plays a determinant role in shaping quality of life. Regional research has been less active in considering spatial variation in other factors that are critical to individual and societal well-being. For example, the regional stu…
Medicine (42 obras) · Economics (34 obras) · Psychology (31 obras) · Geography (27 obras) · Environmental health (26 obras) · Economic growth (24 obras) · Mental health (22 obras) · Demographic economics (21 obras) · Health disparities and outcomes (21 obras) · Political science (21 obras)