Bitte Modin Professor

Bitte Modin is a professor of medical sociology at the Department of Public Health Sciences and the Director of CHESS, Centre for Health Equity Studies. Common to practically all of her research is the focus on childhood social disadvantage and its implications for people’s present and future health, as well as the ambition to identify the pathways through which such influences operate. Early experiences and exposures may stem from the larger social environment as well as from the family’s or the child’s own social standing within the various contexts of social life.

In today’s society, the path to a successful socio-economic career and its health-related advantages usually goes via the educational system. Therefore, an issue that often recurs in her research is the role of educational opportunities, either as an outcome in its own right, or as a potential mediator or modifier in the studied relationship. Social support and individual coping strategies are other examples of conditions that can “buffer” against childhood adversity translating into health problems, and constitute additional aspects that permeate her research.

Bitte’s scientific interest can be divided into two broad lines of orientations. The first is concerned with how social inequalities in health are transferred and maintained across family lineages spanning several generations, and the second focuses on how different features of the school context shape and modify present-day youth’s level of stress and mental well-being.

Currently, she is also Director of Doctoral Studies in Public Health.