Cohort Three (2018)

Jennifer studied Psychology as an undergraduate at the University of Edinburgh and went on to complete an MSc in Health Psychology at the University of St Andrews. She previously worked as a Research Assistant at Ninewells Hospital Dundee and more recently for NHS Fife. Her research interests include the application of public health policy/large scale interventions to improve health behaviours associated with the development of chronic conditions and the impact of inequality.

In the first year of her programme, Jennifer completed modules in Economic Evaluation, Cost Effectiveness Modelling, Advanced Simulation Methods, and Valuing the Benefits of Health Care to gain the skills and knowledge in health economics and decision making required to undertake this multidisciplinary PhD programme.

Jennifer’s research attachment investigated complex systems for NCD prevention.  Her own research attachment is titled Inequalities: Views from public health and welfare economics.

Title of PhD

Understanding the role of inequality in creating and sustaining the alcohol harm paradox

Supervisors

Robin Purshouse, John Holmes

Jennifer has published the following papers:

Boyd J, McMillan B, Easton K, Delaney B, Mitchell C. Utility of the COM-B model in identifying facilitators and barriers to maintaining a healthy postnatal lifestyle following a diagnosis of gestational diabetes: a qualitative study. BMJ open. 2020 Aug 1;10(8):e037318.

Jennifer also won the Ole Jorgen Skog Award for Early Career Scientist from the Kettil Bruun Society for her systematic review, the first paper of the PhD.

Prior to joining ScHARR, Amy obtained a BSc degree in Pharmacy and a MSc degree in Clinical Pharmacy both at the National Taiwan University. Besides bed-side training, she has also interned at the Centre for Drug Evaluation (HTA body) in Taiwan where she performed a systematic review of the effectiveness of target therapies in non-small cell lung cancer. For her Master’s thesis, she has evaluated the cost-effectiveness of a pharmacist-assisted Warfarin monitoring program. She then worked as a Research Assistant at the School of Pharmacy, National Taiwan University, where she was in charge of model adaption for drug economic evaluation projects as well as model construction for the Taiwan EQ-5D-5L tariff derivation study. She has also conducted health care utilisation and pharmacoepidemiology studies, primarily in the area of oncology and maternal health, using national health insurance claims database and survey database

In the first year of her programme, Amy is taking modules in Introduction to Health Economics, Medical Statistics and Evidence Synthesis, Advanced Simulation Methods, and Using Policy to Strengthen Health Systems.

Besides modules, Amy has undertaken several research attachments including looking at appropriate response options in preference based outcome measures, investigating how the relationship between runner characteristics and sustained participation in Parkrun events, and is currently busy with her third attachment exploring the impact of uncertainty in health economic decision models.

In her first year Amy has received training in Data Manipulation and Visualisation in R, and Causal Inference Affected by Treatment Switching. She has also assisted in manuscript preparation for her first attachment regarding response options and submitted a conference abstract about sustained participation in Parkrun events upon completion of her second attachment.

Amy has assisted organising the “Meet the Decision Maker” session for the programme and facilitated the invitation of key speakers from academic, Public Health England, local authorities, NICE, WHO, and other NGOs to share their experience in public health decision making and how research may inform public health decisions.

PhD proposal

Developing a methodology framework to evaluate the impact of health intervention sequence

Supervisors

Nick Latimer, Duncan Gillespie, Jim Chilcott

“The programme provides huge flexibility in terms of training opportunities (i.e. scheduled attachments at ScHARR and additional off-campus training upon request). The funding allows the training progress to be tailored to our own needs and mentors play an important role in guiding us to best allocate our resources in the first year. The programme has really stretched my limits and pushed me away from my comfort zone regarding research topics and disciplines that I used to work with. I felt privileged to meet experts and decision makers from all kinds of organisations through the network that has already been built up within the programme”

Artur has studied a variety of aspects of economics, mathematics, and statistics during his time at the Universities of Lancaster, British Columbia and St. Gallen. During his BSc and MSc in Economics, he has developed a deep interest in mathematical modelling and statistical examination of those models. Artur was led to the Wellcome PhD programme by his desire to develop his knowledge of those methods by applying them to the study of the impact of recreational drug use and dependence on society and the policy responses to these phenomena.

In the first year of his programme, Artur is taking modules in Cost–effectiveness Modelling, Health Needs Assessment, Advanced Simulation Methods, Study Design and Systematic Review Methods, and Contemporary Health Psychology and Behaviour Change.

PhD proposal

Potential for supervised drug injection facilities in the UK

Supervisors

Richard Cooper, Mark Strong

“The Wellcome program allows the freedom to pursue my interests, yet supports me with the training necessary to do this”.

Paul is an MD by training. He completed his doctoral degree in medicine at the University of Witten/Herdecke in Germany. Before he joined ScHARR in September 2018, he did a research masters in health sciences, with a focus on epidemiology and health technology assessment, at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. During his studies, he also led a project in the field of digital epidemiology at the Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research. Between studying, he worked as a clinical trial investigator and interned at the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland.

In the first year of the programme, Paul took modules in Agent–based Modelling and Multi–Agent Systems, Public Policy Evaluation, Health Economics, Further Statistical Methods for Health Economic Analysis, and Inference. He completed three research attachments, including a project on socio-economic and geographic disparities in the access to parkrun events in England.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/19004143v1

Research interests

Paul works on the normative theory and the empirical methods of health state valuations. More specifically, he studies how health state preferences can/should be measured, how individual preferences can/should be aggregated, and how societal preferences can/should then be used in economic evaluations of public health interventions. For his research, he combines methods and perspectives from various fields, including health economics and decision science, as well as social choice, game, and democratic theory. Apart from this, he has wide-reaching research interests in open science, digital epidemiology, prediction modelling, real-world evidence, and decision modelling.

PhD proposal

Social tariffs, preference heterogeneity, and collective choice: how to derive societal health state values that reflect the will of the people?

Supervisors

John Brazier, Ben van Hout

Personal website: https://bitowaqr.github.io/about_me/ 

Tazeen is an Associate Scientist at the Maternal and Child Health Division of ICDD,B in Bangladesh. She has a BSc and MSc in Economics and substantial experience in the area of public health research. She has been involved in large community based research trials, measurement and validation of indicators as well as development and costing of national strategies and action plans related to adolescent, maternal, newborn and child health. She is particularly interested in developing her skills in the area of health economic modelling, health financing and equity.

In the first year of her programme, Tazeen completed modules in Cost–effectiveness Modelling for Health Technology Assessment, Medical Statistics and Evidence Synthesis, Advanced Simulation Methods and Contemporary Health Psychology and Behaviour Change.

Tazeen’s first research attachment looked at maternity services in low-middle income countries. Her second research attachment is titled Inequalities: Views from public health and welfare economics. The final attachment was on valuing health benefits in public health.

PhD proposal

Scaling up effective interventions to reduce maternal hypertensive disorder and gestational diabetes: A return on investment case for Bangladesh

Supervisors

Simon Dixon, Chloe Thomas

Tazeen has published the following papers:

Ali NB, Tahsina T, Hoque DME, Hasan MM, Iqbal A, Huda TM, et al. Association of food security and other socio-economic factors with dietary diversity and nutritional statuses of children aged 6-59 months in rural Bangladesh. PloS one. 2019;14(8):e0221929.

Tahsina T, Ali NB, Hoque DE, Huda TM, Salam SS, Hasan MM, et al. Out-of-pocket expenditure for seeking health care for sick children younger than 5 years of age in Bangladesh: findings from cross-sectional surveys, 2009 and 2012. Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition. 2017;36(1):33.

Tahsina T, Ali NB, Siddique MAB, Ahmed S, Rahman M, Islam S, et al. Determinants of hardship financing in coping with out of pocket payment for care seeking of under five children in selected rural areas of Bangladesh. PloS one. 2018;13(5):e0196237.

Ahsan KZ, Tahsina T, Iqbal A, Ali NB, Chowdhury SK, Huda TM, et al. Production and use of estimates for monitoring progress in the health sector: the case of Bangladesh. Global health action. 2017;10(sup1):1298890.