Cohort 3 (2018–2019)

Jennifer Boyd

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.

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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. During the Wellcome DTC programme she hopes to develop skills in modelling and simulation to apply these techniques to her areas of interest.

In the first year of her programme, Jennifer is taking 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 first research attachment investigated complex systems for NCD prevention. Her current research attachment is titled Inequalities: Views from public health and welfare economics.

PhD proposal

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

Supervisors

Robin Purshouse, John Holmes

 “The ScHARR Wellcome Trust programme is a unique opportunity to integrate your existing knowledge within a broader context of health. As I am from a Health Psychology background it was important to me to shift my understanding from an individual level, to tackling major health challenges such as NCDs from an upstream perspective. The programme has allowed me to develop the skills necessary to do this and I have felt supported in pursuing research opportunities including plans to attend conferences and potential future publications”.
Amy Chang

Prior to joining ScHARR, Amy obtained a BSc degree in Pharmacy and a MSc degree in Clinical Pharmacy both at the National Taiwan University.

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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 Kowalski

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.

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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 Trust Ph.D. program 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 Costeffectiveness 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 Trust program allows the freedom to pursue my interests, yet supports me with the training necessary to do this”.
Paul Schneider

Paul is an MD by training. He completed his doctoral degree in medicine at the University of Witten/Herdecke in Germany.

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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 Tahsina

Tazeen worked as a Senior Research Investigator at the Maternal and Child Health Division of ICDD,B in Bangladesh.

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Tazeen worked as a Senior Research Investigator at the Maternal and Child Health Division of ICDD,B in Bangladesh. Tazeen 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 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 measurement and validation of indicators and equity in health services.

In the first year of her programme, Tazeen is taking modules in Costeffectiveness Modelling for Health Technology Assessment, Medical Statistics and Evidence Synthesis, Further Statistical Methods for Health Economic Analysis, 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.

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