Dr Amy Clair, University of Adelaide

Housing, health, and policy coherence

Housing is an important social determinant of health, and much research has been dedicated to understanding this relationship. However, much is focused on specific health outcomes and individual aspects of housing. In combination these approaches risk preventing a comprehensive and broad understanding of the relationship between housing and health, potentially resulting in underestimates of the importance of housing to health (and vice versa). To contribute towards filling this gap Amy outlines an approach that builds on the Salutogenic approach developed by sociologist of health Aaron Antonovsky, the housing niches approach developed by social and environmental psychologist Susan Saegert, alongside theories from other disciplines such as social harm and slow violence, to develop a comprehensive framework of how housing policy, and social policies more generally, can be linked with health. Watch again now