Cardiff School of Social Sciences

Research Interests

My main area of research interest is the social determinants of young people's health and wellbeing, particularly the effects of education policies and school environments on health outcomes. I have been funded by the UK Medical Research Council and the National Institute of Health Research to develop and evaluate complex interventions which modify the school social environment in order to improve public health.

I use inter-disciplinary conceptual frameworks and mixed-methods to study major adolescent health issues, including youth drug and alcohol use, bullying and violence, and diet. For example, by drawing on concepts from the sociology of education, my research has generated new theory and evidence about how school cultures and education policies can structure drug-related harms. I have also applied theories and methods from epidemiology to examine social problems such as school disengagement and teenage pregnancy.

There are opportunities for exceptional students to join the Cardiff School of Social Sciences as doctoral researchers and I am interested in supervising PhD students on topics relating to: young people’s health and wellbeing; health inequalities; school-based health improvement; the health effects of education policies; social network theories; and drugs and drugs policy

Research Centre

DECIPHer UKCRC Public Health Research Centre of Excellence 

Recent Publications

Fletcher, A. and Bonell, C. Social-network influences on smoking, drinking and drug use in secondary school: centrifugal and centripetal forces. Sociology of Health and Illness doi:10.1111/j.1467-9566.2012.01522.x.

Kneale, D., Fletcher, A., Wiggins, R. and Bonell, C. Distribution and determinants of risk of teenage motherhood in three British cohorts: implications for targeting prevention interventions. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 2013; 67(1): 48-55.

Bonell, C., Fletcher, A., Morton, M., Lorenc, T. and Moore, L. Realist randomised controlled trials: a new approach to evaluating complex public-health interventions. Social Science & Medicine 2012; 75(12): 2299-2306.

Fletcher, A. and Krug, A. Excluding Youth? A global review of harm reduction services for young people, in Global State of Harm Reduction 2012. London: Harm Reduction International.

Fletcher, A., Bonell, C. and Sorhaindo, A. You are what your friends eat: systematic review of social network analyses of young people’s eating behaviours and bodyweight. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 2011; 65(6): 548-555.

Fletcher, A., Bonell, C. and Sorhaindo, A. “We don’t have no drugs education”: The myth of universal drugs education in English secondary schools? International Journal of Drug Policy 2010; 21(6): 452-458.

Fletcher, A., Bonell, C. and Rhodes, T. New counter-school cultures: female students’ drug use at a high-achieving secondary school. British Journal of Sociology of Education 2009; 30(5): 549-562.

Twitter

Follow Adam on twitter @DrAdamFletcher