The McMaster Institute for Health Equity is an interdisciplinary platform for research and knowledge mobilization inspired by the priorities and expertise of McMaster researchers. Our Health Equity seminar series presents timely, health-equity focused research on a diverse range of topics that is relevant to researchers, students, staff and community members across a wide array of disciplines and backgrounds.
Cash Transfers as Health Policies: Do They Work?
Robbie Brydon, Research Associate, McMaster University<
September 23, 2024 | 11:30am-12:30pm
Public health advocates often call for the use of cash transfer programs (basic income, social assistance, child benefits, etc.) to improve population health. Advocates sometimes extend this reasoning to argue that the cost of increased income support will be offset by savings in publicly funded health care. Until recently, there has not been a solid evidence base to support or refute these claims: the correlation between income and health is well established, but evidence on the causal impact of providing (or removing) cash supplements has not been well synthesized. A team of researchers led by Robbie Brydon conducted an exhaustive scoping review and found 164 experimental or quasi-experimental studies assessing the impact of cash transfers on health in high-income countries. Come hear what they discovered about the state of the literature and the strength of the evidence about claims that cash transfers improve health and reduce health care utilization.
Video coming soon!
MIHE Seminar Series: Structuralizing the Stress Process: States as Contextual Determinants of Stress and Mental Health
Rachel Donnelly, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Vanderbilt University.
November 4, 2024 | 11:30am-12:30pm ET
Location: LRW 1003 (Community Room). Light refreshments will be served. No registration is needed.
For a virtual link, please register at https://bit.ly/3Tt9uFI
State policies are salient predictors of health and mortality, yet much remains to be known about how state policy contexts influence mental health outcomes. This talk advances and tests a theoretical framework that situates the state policy context as a critical determinant of mental health, including the stress processes that impact mental health. Using nationally representative survey data from the Household Pulse Survey (2020-2023), we consider how state policy liberalism is associated with probable depression and anxiety in the United States and how state policy liberalism weakens associations between stressors and mental health. This study “structuralizes the stress process” by pointing to the centrality of state policy contexts for mental health outcomes in the United States.