Sheffield
The School of Health and Related Research is now advertising a funded PhD Studentship opportunity with the White Rose network and within our work with the CLAHRC Y&H programme (Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care for Yorkshire & Humber, www.clahrc-yh.nihr.ac.uk)
This opportunity offers the very best postgraduate students the chance to apply for funded PhD study at one of the UK’s top university departments for postgraduate research studies in the field of health economics.
The focus of the PhD research is; Exploring the economics of unified budgets for health and social care Further information can be found at http://www.shef.ac.uk/scharr/prospective_students/researchdegrees/studentships.
The closing date for applications is Monday 13th April with interviews held on Thursday 7th May
This studentship is part of the White Rose Network Health Economics Across Sectors: Reaching out across boundaries. The network lead is Dr Tracey Young, University of Sheffield. The studentship project areas and supervisors combine the following:
1. Free Exercise! Does the Leeds Let’s Get Active (LLGA) scheme help to increase physical activity and reduce health inequalities?
Lead Supervisor: David Meads, University of Leeds
Co-Supervisors: Laura Bojke, University of York and Karen Bloor, University of York
This studentship will be based at the University of Leeds.
2. Exploring the economics of unified budgets for health and social care.
Lead Supervisor: Tracey Young, University of Sheffield
Co-Supervisors: Claire Hulme, University of Leeds and Christopher Dayson, Sheffield Hallam University.
This studentship will be based at the University of Sheffield.
3. Marginalised communities.
Lead Supervisor: Gerry Richardson, University of York
Co-Supervisors: Melanie Jones, University of Sheffield and Maria Horne, University of Bradford.
This studentship will be based at the University of York
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Leeds
Leeds Let’s Get Active (LLGA) is a £1.35M Public Health/Sport England funded project to encourage people who do not do any physical activity to do at least 30 minutes, once a week. The scheme offers universal free gym, swim and sports in many leisure centres and community settings across the City. LLGA has seen over 40,000 people register and over 130,000 (specified time) session visits. Facility use is monitored by Leeds City Council’s (LCC) leisure management system which allows tracking of every visit and every member (across all LCC card-access sessions and facilities). Collection of IPAQ (7 day recall self-reported Physical Activity) at baseline along with demographic data (including postcode) and has created a large data set allowing analysis of behaviour change. However, the cost-effectiveness of this project has not been evaluated and urgent work is required to establish the value for money of the scheme from the perspective of the Council and Public Health. In doing so research is required to understand what are the most appropriate outcomes and perspectives to base an evaluation on.
The PhD research questions may include:
1. Is LLGA cost-effective? Compared to ‘do nothing’ or other available schemes?
2. Does LLGA reduce health inequalities?
3. What are the considerations in conducting an analysis from the perspective of the leisure facilities and Council? How can these be reconciled with that of the NHS?
4. What are the economic barriers to physical activity in the most deprived areas of Leeds (access cost only, time, travel/transport cost)?
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York
Cost-effectiveness analyses typically consider the assessment of value for money assuming that maximising health is the primary objective and that individuals have free and open access to health care. However, within Yorkshire and Humber there are several communities who access health care in a different way from the general population, for example prisoners and travellers. While there are studies of cost-effectiveness in these populations, there is potential for more work, both applied and methodological, in this area. This studentship will focus on evaluating cost-effectiveness of interventions in these marginalised groups. It is anticipated that for these groups, cross sectoral and cross temporal effects are likely to be important. For example, for prisoners maximising health is a key objective but reduction in re-offending (cross sectoral with criminal justice) in the longer term (cross temporal) is also likely to be an important concern. As part of the studentship, utilisation and linking of existing databases should be explored and employed wherever this is feasible and appropriate(such as the Offender Health Information Technology Database(OHIT) and Hospital Episode Statistics (HES)).
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