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

在生活史理论的进化框架的指导下，该理论预测父母在低质量环境中的投资较低，劳拉的博士研究探讨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来分析各种社会文化和物理环境暴露（例如安全感，空气污染，被动吸烟和水消毒剂副产品）与母亲开始和维持母乳喂养的机会之间的关联。劳拉的第一篇博士论文调查了具有全国代表性的千年队列研究中当地环境质量的主观和客观衡量标准，发现后者与母乳喂养的开始和持续时间更密切相关，更高的SES保护了拥有更多资源的母亲的母乳喂养机会，即使在低质量的环境中。论文2着重于布拉德福德研究中的物理环境质量。虽然个人SES积极预测母乳喂养，环境质量的物理措施表现出不一致的关联，例如水化学品预测减少的机会，开始母乳喂养的巴基斯坦裔母亲，但空气污染预测减少危害之间停止母乳喂养的白色英国出生的母亲。论文3分析了两个队列的数据，以在更广泛的育儿，生殖和健康行为中减少母乳喂养，并发现这些领域内和之间的特征有限的聚类，尽管白色英国出生的母亲比巴基斯坦出生的母亲表现出更多的聚类。劳拉的博士研究增加了进化公共卫生的发展领域，她的研究结果有助于理论辩论，父母的投资是否构成了生命史战略的一部分，并对环境和婴儿喂养政策的影响。在她的奖学金在LSE年，劳拉将从英国的研究过渡到发展赠款的项目集中在LMIC。随着对环境不公正的兴趣日益增长，劳拉热衷于在受自然灾害影响的社区进行研究，以及其他人的行为所带来的环境逆境;她特别有兴趣在拉丁美洲工作，特别是秘鲁，因为其空气污染严重，易受厄尔尼诺南方涛动等气候变化事件的影响。在新的研究中，劳拉将在另一个英国数据集中分析环境与母乳喂养的联系，ESRC奖学金计划也将为劳拉提供必要的时间和技能，为拉丁美洲未来的研究项目制定强有力的资助计划。劳拉将扩大她对环境和健康问题的知识，特别是有关拉丁美洲。作为她的奖学金的一部分，她将在环境正义，空气质量监测，创造性的研究方法和西班牙进行培训。劳拉还将通过在会议上发表演讲和组织关于环境对妇女健康影响的研讨会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.