A research project by the University of Sussex that is funded by the BUPA foundation set out to look at the link between education and health will publish interim results in December of this year.
The project aims to explore the relationship between access to education and the health outcome amongst children.
The project is halfway through completion and will be published in July 2011.
The research will investigate the extent of the effects which different educational access has on health conditions; and how far education can be used to explain these inconsistencies.
Principal Investigator Dr Ricardo Sabates said that the research: “aims to investigate factors that can reduce inequalities between health and educational outcomes during childhood. Early deficiencies in child health can have important consequences for later cognitive development.
“Our study suggests that in societies marked by large social and economic inequalities, access to health services during pregnancy can moderate the relationship between health and education.”
The investigation will concentrate on Ethiopia, Peru, Vietnam and the state of Andhra Pradesh in India, where there is a notable lack of educational opportunities available.
Access to education is essential for development and improvements in areas such as the reduction of inequality and poverty, alongside the increase of good healthcare.
There is also a mutual relationship between access to education and the long term health issues such as stunted growth, malnutrition and childhood diseases amongst many others.
The information applied in this article has been obtained through the ‘Young Lives’ longitudinal study.
Unlike typical research on poverty where the causes have seen to be through the lack of materialistic goods, food and health, ‘Young Lives’ prides itself on also trying to understand the effects of child poverty alongside the childrens’ emotional and psychological wellbeing.
