Quick Facts
Biography
Kate Pickett (born 1965), FRSA is a British epidemiologist who is Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Health Sciences at the University of York and was a National Institute for Health Research Career Scientist from 2007-2012. She co-authored (with Richard G. Wilkinson) The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better and is a co-founder of The Equality Trust. Kate was awarded a 2013 Silver Rose Award from Solidar for championing equality and the 2014 Charles Cully Memorial Medal by the Irish Cancer Society.
She was a commissioner for the York Fairness Commission and a commissioner for the Living Wage Commission. She serves on the Scientific Council of Inequality Watch, the Scientific Board of Progressive Economy, and is a member of the Human Capital Research Working Group of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. She is on the Steering Committee of the Alliance for Sustainability and Prosperity.
Background
Pickett trained in biological anthropology at Cambridge University, nutritional science at Cornell University and epidemiology at the University of California Berkeley, where she received the Warren Winkelstein award for epidemiology. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Fellow of the UK Faculty of Public Health.
Research
One programme of research focuses on the social determinants of health, including the influences of such factors as social class, income inequality, neighbourhood context and ethnic density on such varied outcomes as mortality and morbidity, teenage birth, obesity, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and health-related behaviours. A second research agenda focuses on smoking in pregnancy; its causal role in relation to behavioural problems in children and its psychosocial context.
Selected bibliography
Books
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- Adapted as the 2016 documentary film The Divide. Picket and Wilkinson each appear as commentators.