Health Policy Unit

Head of Unit: Professor Richard Smith
Unit Research Degree Co-ordinator: Dr Arnab Acharya
Unit Administrator: Lucy Paul

Tel: 020 7927 2431, Fax: 020 7637 5391

The aim of the Unit is to conduct research that will inform the development and implementation of health policy in low- and middle-income countries. Staff come from a wide range of disciplines including economics, epidemiology, mathematics, policy analysis, medicine and social anthropology.

There are a number of research themes and groups in the Unit including the Health Economics and Financing Programme (HEFP); HIV Tools modelling and economics research (HIVTools); Communicable Disease Policy Research Group (CDPRG); Conflict and Health; Gender Violence and Health and Anthropology of medicine and health. The Unit also houses the UK's Department for International Development funded Consortium for Research on Equitable Health Systems (CREHS) and provides social science, economics and modelling input to Department for International Development (DFID) funded Consortia on HIV & Sexual Health Research; Communicable diseases Consortium (TARGETS); Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health and HIV treatment and care as well as the Gates Malaria Partnership, the DFID Microbicides Development Programme and the Gates Avahan Project. Unit members edit the journal Health Policy and Planning.

Current research includes:

• research on equitable health systems, including a randomized controlled trial of interventions to improve uptake of community-based health insurance; an assessment of the burden of ill-health and health care costs on households, an evaluation of the Tanzanian ITN voucher scheme and research on cost-effectiveness of Hib roll-out for the Hib Initiative;

• policy analysis in low- and middle-income countries, including the role of global health initiatives on HIV/AIDS and their effects on health systems, issues of global governance (particularly in relation to changes in international architecture and overseas development assistance) and methods for policy analysis;

• economic analysis and epidemiological modelling to inform disease control policy, especially for malaria, HIV and STD policy, including assessments of the impact and cost-effectiveness of different HIV interventions, the role of new technologies (microbicides, rapid STI and malaria diagnostics, HSV-2 suppressive therapy, anti-retroviral therapy), costs and impact of scaling-up interventions in various countries including India and South Africa and the role of targeted HIV prevention activities amongst sex workers and injecting drug users (Ukraine, Belarus, India, Bangladesh, Benin, South Africa);

• health systems regulation, peer review and consumer rights: strengthening regulation as a means of improving quality and access to health care in Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

See PeerCon Project Page for further details.

• the impact of conflict on health and health systems, desirable policy and planning responses, strategies to build health systems in post-conflict settings (Afghanistan, West and East Africa), mechanisms to improve service delivery in fragile states (including health finance issues) and assessments of the practical and policy responses of NGOs;

• research on gender violence and health, including prevalence and risk factors for intimate partner violence, documentation of the health needs of trafficked women, the development and evaluation of interventions to prevent or respond to violence and methodological and ethical issues associated with researching violence;

• anthropology of medicine and health, including research related to malaria, HIV, TB and migrant health, studies of community perceptions of medical research and health interventions and the organization, practice and ethics of overseas health research and clinical trials.