Research subject Disability and health inequalities

Persons with disabilities are disproportionately affected by economic difficulties, unemployment, social exclusion, and limited access to healthcare, which can impact their health and lead to health inequity.

However, disability as a determinant of health has long been overlooked in health inequality research. This decades-long omission is partly because our understand of disability is dominated by the medical model, which conceptualizes disability purely as a medical and individual characteristic.

By adopting an intersectional and life-course approach, our research aims at investigating the social, psycho-social, care provision, and policy contexts factors which generate disability-related health inequalities over the life-course.

With a special focus in the areas of cancer, reproductive health, and the inter-generational transmission of disadvantages, our research is based on quantitative studies using the data from the Swedish national registers and surveys, and advanced statistical and epidemiological methods. Our research ultimately aims to bring together international scholars, public health practitioners, health and social care professionals, and the community of people with disability for improving our overall understanding of how social inequalities in health are generated and retrained.