Research on the social determinants of health and inequality across the life course, and on medicine as a social institution.

What we study. This cluster examines the social, political, economic and policy determinants of health and wellbeing, and the inequalities within them across the life course and across geographic areas. Work in the cluster covers psychosocial pathways between work, stress and disease, including biomarker evidence; ageing, disability and the housing and care arrangements that shape later life; childhood mental health and development; and multidimensional wellbeing and its gradients by education and skill. The cluster also studies medicine as an institution — the history and evolution of Western and Chinese medicine, the doctor–patient relationship, professional norms, self-health management, and the social construction of disease and illness.

Recent work. Tarani Chandola’s GRF-funded study of whether home modifications prevent disability among older adults is a multinational longitudinal comparison; related work appeared in The Lancet Regional Health – Europe (2022), and his current research examines HPA-axis biomarkers associated with social isolation, loneliness and chronic pain. Ming Wen leads Early Childhood Development in Hong Kong, a longitudinal study funded by the RGC Collaborative Research Fund. Duoduo Xu’s Stress, Skills, and Society pilot extends the HK-CHILD investigation of childhood mental health. Xiaoli Tian’s research on Traditional Chinese medicine and post-COVID self-health management is published in 2026, following earlier work on affective relationships in medical practice (2024). Satoshi Araki holds a Faculty seed grant on education- and skills-based gradients in multidimensional well-being.