The life course: challenges and opportunities for public health research

Excerpt

While life course approaches in the social sciences have a long tradition (Elder and Giele 2009; Heinz et al. 2009), it was not until the 1990s that a life course perspective was also introduced to the analysis of health and longevity. With origins in research on health inequalities, the hypothesis of biological programming and the availability of national longitudinal data, life course epidemiology has been investigating the long-term effects of biological, physical and social exposures on health and chronic disease risk during gestation, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood and later adult life and across the generations (Kuh et al. 2003; Blane et al. 2007; Ben-Shlomo 2007). In this context, a wealth of innovative findings were gained by integrating determinants and mechanisms acting earlier in life to the explanation of health and health inequalities in adulthood. Life course influences are increasingly seen to hold the key to a better understanding of disease aetiology and the existence of social inequalities in health. …