Project title
Social Inequalities in Health: The Ras Beirut Well Being Survey
Research team
PrincipaI Investigator: Afamia Kaddour
Co-Principal Investigators: Sawsan Abdulrahim, Cynthia Myntti, Nisreen Salti, Livia Wick, Huda Zurayk
Collaborators: Nancy Krieger, France Lert, Maria Melchior
Overall objectives and specific aims
The overall objective of the Ras Beirut Well-Being Survey is to enrich analyses of poverty and inequality issues as applied to public health, in a socially and economically diverse neighborhood of Beirut, Lebanon.
The specific aims of the survey are the following:
1- To describe the socio-economic profile of the residents of Ras Beirut.
2- To conceptualize absolute deprivation as the lack of economic as well as political resources at the individual and neighborhood levels.
3- To contest the notion of relative deprivation as based on social comparison and resulting only in individual feelings of envy, frustration and resentment.
4- To examine an alternative concept – the sense of injustice – as a reaction to individual and collective experiences of deprivation.
5- Informed by the ecosocial theory of disease, to identify the mechanisms and pathways through which the sense of injustice affects health.
Research Timeline
2009-2012
Summary
What explains social inequalities in health? Answers to this simple yet profound question promise new insights for policy and action.
In recent years public health researchers have devoted new energy to answering this question through the lens of deprivation. “Absolute deprivation”, generally defined as the measurable lack of economic resources, has long been the focus of those interested in the political economy of health, and recently enriched in the ecosocial theory of health. The concept of “relative deprivation”, generally defined as individually experienced resentment, envy or frustration, has also gained currency in recent years. With roots in the disciplines of social psychology, economics and sociology, proponents of relative deprivation argue that health outcomes are also influenced by social comparison, not just by objective measures of inequality.
This research project examines the social determinants of health in Ras Beirut, a socially and economically heterogeneous neighborhood of the capital of Lebanon, where it is possible to find deprivation and affluence juxtaposed. No current social, demographic or health data exist for Ras Beirut. Once described as a middle class district, anecdotal evidence now suggests that Ras Beirut, like the rest of Lebanon, is experiencing widening income gaps and concomitant disparities in well-being. The Ras Beirut Well-Being Survey will therefore produce quantitative and qualitative evidence to document and explain social inequalities in health.
This project is implemented by the newly established “Social Inequalities in Health Working Group”, a multidisciplinary research group at CRPH. For more information on the Ras Beirut Neighborhood Initiative, click here.
Funding sources
Ford Foundation, LNCSR (The Lebanese National Council for Scientific Research), the CRPH, the RHWG (The Reproductive Health Working Group), and the CCECS (the Center for Civic Engagement and Community Service at AUB)
Contact
Afamia Kaddour