Pepita Barlow

Pepita Barlow is Assistant Professor of Health Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is also Co-Director of the MSc in International Health Policy. Before joining the LSE, Dr Barlow was a Research Associate at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. She previously completed a DPhil (PhD) in Sociology at the University of Oxford, an MSc in Sociology, also at Oxford, and a BSc in Economics with Economic History at the LSE. She also worked briefly at the Institute for Government and has served as a scientific adviser to the World Health Organization.

Dr Barlow’s research examines how policies and actors outside the health sector impact on health and health policy. As a social scientist with training in sociology and economics, Dr Barlow examines these processes by drawing on multidisciplinary perspectives, quasi-experimental methods, and novel text data. Her most recent research has focused on the impacts of trade liberalisation, including Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). This includes a series of papers evaluating the role of US FTAs in the global diffusion of ‘obesogenic’ food environments, and whether trade liberalisation exposes governments in low- and middle-income countries to pressure to change or repeal their public health policies. In other work, she has evaluated the health impacts of labour market regulations, austerity, and educational reforms.

Expertise Details

Free Trade Agreements; political economy of health; social determinants of health; health inequalities; quasi-experimental methods; systematic reviews; mixed-methods research

Research

Liberal trade policy and food insecurity across the income distribution: an observational analysis in 132 countries, 2014–17 Article Author(s) Pepita Barlow, Rachel Loopstra, Valerie Tarasuk, Aaron Reeves

Global disparities in health-systems financing: A cross-national analysis of the impact of tariff reductions and state capacity on public health expenditure in 65 low- and middle-income countries, 1996–2015 Article Author(s) Pepita Barlow

Does trade liberalization reduce child mortality in low- and middle-income countries? A synthetic control analysis of 36 policy experiments, 1963-2005