MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit

At MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, we work to understand how different factors – social, behavioural, economic, political and environmental – affect the health and wellbeing of people and populations. We want to know why these factors affect people differently, and to identify the best ways to improve health and to reduce inequalities.

In our work, we seek to answer questions such as:

• Why does life expectancy depend so much on where you were born and where you live?
• What is the impact of welfare reform on mental health?
• What role does the media play in promoting unhealthy behaviour?
• How can schools best support the health and wellbeing of students?
• How do we prevent the uptake of smoking by teenagers?
• What are the key measures that governments can take to reduce health inequalities? 

Our staff and students have joined us from all over the world, and come from a range of disciplines including statistics, mathematics, epidemiology, public health medicine, nursing, natural sciences, human sciences, nutrition, sociology, anthropology, economics, psychology, geography, and history. We are passionate about maintaining the highest standards of equality, diversity and flexibility in all that we do. Our unit is part of the School of Health and Wellbeing, which was awarded an Athena SWAN Gold Award in 2018.

We receive joint core funding from the Medical Research Council (MRC) and Scottish Government Chief Scientist Office (CSO). 2018 was a milestone year for the unit, marking the 20th anniversary of its inception as the MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit. We are part of many research and public health groups, including ScotPHO.