Environmental inequities and maternal health and behaviour: Building bridges from UK-based research to research in low- and middle-income countries

在生命史理论的进化框架的指导下，劳拉的博士研究探索了英国母乳喂养行为的社会经济差异，特别关注当地的环境质量。劳拉使用先进的统计技术分析了各种社会文化和物理环境暴露（例如安全感、空气污染、被动烟雾和水消毒剂副产品）与母亲开始和维持母乳喂养的机会之间的关系。劳拉的第一篇博士论文在具有全国代表性的千年队列研究中调查了当地环境质量的主观和客观指标，发现后者与母乳喂养的开始和持续时间有更强的联系，更高的社会经济地位保护了拥有更多资源的母亲的母乳喂养机会，即使是在低质量的环境中。论文2聚焦于Born in Bradford研究中的物理环境质量。虽然个体的社会经济地位对母乳喂养有积极的预测，但环境质量的物理测量显示出不一致的关联，例如，水化学物质预测巴基斯坦裔母亲开始母乳喂养的机会减少，但空气污染预测英国出生的白人母亲停止母乳喂养的危险减少。论文3分析了来自两个队列的数据，将母乳喂养置于更广泛的养育、生殖和健康行为中，发现这些领域内和领域之间的特征聚类有限，尽管英国出生的白人母亲比巴基斯坦出生的母亲表现出更多的聚类。劳拉的博士研究为进化公共卫生领域的发展做出了贡献，她的发现有助于理论辩论，即亲代投资是否构成生活史策略的一部分，并对环境和婴儿喂养政策有影响。在伦敦政治经济学院学习期间，劳拉将从英国的研究工作过渡到为中低收入国家的项目提供资助。随着对环境不公的兴趣日益浓厚，劳拉热衷于在受自然灾害影响的社区和他人行为带来的环境逆境中进行研究；她对在拉丁美洲工作特别感兴趣，特别是秘鲁，因为秘鲁的空气污染程度很高，而且容易受到厄尔Niño南方涛动等气候变化事件的影响。虽然一些奖学金时间被分配给新的研究，在此期间，劳拉将分析另一个英国数据集中与母乳喂养的环境联系，但ESRC奖学金计划也将重要地给予劳拉时间和技能，为拉丁美洲背景下的未来研究项目制定强有力的资助提案。劳拉将扩大她在特别是与拉丁美洲有关的环境和健康问题方面的知识。作为奖学金的一部分，她将接受环境正义、空气质量监测、创造性研究方法和西班牙语方面的培训。劳拉还将通过在会议上发表演讲和组织一个关于环境对妇女健康影响的讲习班来增加她的博士研究的影响。

Guided by the evolutionary framework of life history theory, which predicts lower parental investment in lower-quality environments, Laura's PhD research explored socioeconomic differentials in breastfeeding behaviour in the UK with a particular focus on local environmental quality. Laura used advanced statistical techniques to analyse associations between various sociocultural and physical environmental exposures (e.g. feelings of safety, air pollution, and passive smoke and water disinfectant by-products) and mothers' chances of initiating and maintaining breastfeeding. Laura's first PhD Paper investigated subjective and objective measures of local environmental quality in the nationally-representative Millennium Cohort Study and found the latter was more robustly associated with both breastfeeding initiation and duration and higher SES protected the breastfeeding chances of mothers with more resources, even in low-quality environments. Paper 2 focused on physical environmental quality in the Born in Bradford Study. Whilst individual SES positively predicted breastfeeding, physical measures of environmental quality showed inconsistent associations, with for example water chemicals predicting reduced chances of initiating breastfeeding amongst Pakistani-origin mothers but air pollution predicting reduced hazards of stopping breastfeeding amongst White UK-born mothers. Paper 3 analysed data from both cohorts to situate breastfeeding within a wider suite of parenting, reproductive and health behaviours and found limited clustering of traits both within and between these domains although White UK-born mothers showed more clustering than Pakistani-origin mothers. Laura's PhD research adds to the developing field of evolutionary public health and her findings contribute to the theoretical debate as to whether parental investment forms part of a life-history strategy and have implications for environmental and infant feeding policy.During her fellowship year at LSE, Laura will be transitioning from UK-based research to developing grants for projects focusing on LMICs. With a growing interest in environmental injustice, Laura is keen to conduct research in communities impacted by natural disasters and the environmental adversity brought about by the behaviour of others; she is particularly interested in working in Latin America and specifically Peru due to its high level of air pollution and vulnerability to climate change events such as the El Niño South Oscillation.Whilst some of the fellowship time is allocated to new research, during which Laura will be analysing environmental links with breastfeeding in another UK dataset, the ESRC fellowship scheme will also importantly give Laura the time and skills required to develop strong grant proposals for future research projects in the Latin American context. Laura will be expanding her knowledge on environmental and health issues particularly pertinent to Latin America. As part of her fellowship she will be undertaking training in environmental justice, air quality monitoring, creative research methods and Spanish. Laura will also be increasing the impact of her PhD research by presenting at conferences and organising a workshop on environmental effects on women's health.