Brian Beach
UCL (University College London); Karolinska Institutet
Brian Beach
Dr Brian Beach is a Senior Research Fellow in Social Policy and Gerontology at University College London (UCL) in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, where he has been a member of the research team for the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) since July 2021. His research examines the intersections between ageing and policy, with emphasis on the dynamics related to work, retirement, and health. His current projects involve analyses of working conditions, cognitive health, and dementia. Since April 2024, he has also held a position at Karolinska Institutet (KI) in Stockholm, Sweden, in the Division of Insurance Medicine at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, conducting register-based studies on sickness absence/disability pension (SA/DP) policy in Sweden.
Prior to UCL, Brian worked for eight years at the International Longevity Centre UK (ILC), where he conducted research on a range of topics related to population ageing, such as loneliness, serious illness, retirement housing, and employment in later life. He has worked in the field of ageing since 2006 and has been an active member on various strategic and advisory groups with universities, the voluntary sector, and government as they examine older people and the world of work.
FURTHER INFORMATION
| Countries | Europe; Sweden; United Kingdom (England); |
|---|---|
| Topics | Employment education and family carers; Epidemiology and ageing trajectories; Housing and care; Social Insurance; Unpaid / informal care; |
| Methods | Analysis of administrative data; Comparative policy analysis; Expert consultations; Knowledge-exchange; Longitudinal data analysis; Policy analysis; Quantitative data analysis; Surveys; |
| Role | Research; |
| Interest Groups | Employment Education and Family carers; Social Care Reform in England; |
| Website | https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/41273-brian-beach |
| ORC.ID | 0000-0002-5917-2531 |
| Other 1 | https://ki.se/en/people/brian-beach; |
| Research interests | Brian’s research examines the intersections between ageing and policy, with emphasis on the dynamics related to work, retirement, and health (including unpaid caregiving as a form of work). In Sweden, his work explores associations among the receipt of sickness absence/disability pension, working conditions, and cognition/dementia. He has conducted further research on a range of topics relevant for an ageing society, including loneliness, specialist retirement housing, cognition/dementia, reforms to public pension systems, and policy efforts to stimulate longer/fuller working lives. |
| Key publications | Powell, J., Willis, P., Cameron, A., Vickery, A., Johnson, E.K., Beach, B. and Smith, R.C. (2024), “The role of built environments and use of communal spaces in helping facilitate social connections of older people living in housing with care schemes”, Quality in Ageing and Older Adults, Vol. 25 No. 3, pp. 220-231. https://doi.org/10.1108/QAOA-11-2023-0083 Head J, Norman P, Shelton N, Beach B, Murray ET. Does the health of local populations modify occupational differences in employment rates of older workers? Findings from the ONS Longitudinal Study 2001-2011. Health Place. 2024 Nov;90:103376. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2024.103376 . Epub 2024 Nov 11. PMID: 39531999. Beach B, Steel N, Steptoe A, Zaninotto P. Associations of cognitive impairment with self-isolation and access to health and care during the COVID-19 pandemic in England. Sci Rep. 2023 Mar 28;13(1):5026. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-31241-3. PMID: 36977759; PMCID: PMC10043531. Beach B, Bélanger-Hardy L, Harding S, Rodrigues Perracini M, Garcia L, Tripathi I, Gillis M, Dow B. Caring for the caregiver: Why policy must shift from addressing needs to enabling caregivers to flourish. Front Public Health. 2022 Oct 19;10:997981. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2022.997981. PMID: 36339159; PMCID: PMC9626797. |