Please Join Us for the Fourth SOCUP Brown Bag Lunch Meeting of the Semester!
Presentation Title: "Health and Inequality: The Impact of Roads, Tracks and Footpaths on Accessibility to Health Care Facilities in Uganda."
Presenter: Susan Mlangwa (Sociology)
Time: 12:00-13:00, Monday, March 21
Place: 915 Social Sociences Buidling
Susan will present a study, which shows access in form of roads, footpaths and intermediate transport do not make people more mobile, but simply fail to connect them with the services they use. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach to health care access the study attempts to throw light on why national transport development has minimal impact on poverty alleviation in rural settings.
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to present a suggestion that transport and road system is an important health determinant operating at the societal level with significant impact on the socioeconomic position of individuals within the society as regard to their differential accessibility means to health care facilitates. Using the integrated rural accessibility methodological framework and socioeconomic position as a fundamental cause of health theoretical framework, I contribute to the discussion on the role of socioeconomic conditions of societies in shaping individual socioeconomic positions that more directly affect health. There is a great deal of literature on the income, education and diet aspects of inequalities in health. However, the impact of mobility and proximity to health care facilities access has not been explored in this context. Moreover, the body of work, which does explore these elements in relation to health, does not address how they might impact on health inequalities. Drawing on empirical work, I discuss ways in which poverty prioritized transport and road system feed into the dynamic between people's access-related needs and optimum usage of health care facilities in a way which can produce, positive health outcomes. I further argue that the analysis of how changes in transport and roads planning (as a health determinant) in terms of level and distribution could work through into positive changes in health and health inequalities