Faculty of Public Health and Policy
Research Training Opportunities
The faculty has research training opportunities for MPhil/PhD and DrPH training in most of the area covered by the work of the research departments.
Applicants should review the work of the research departments to help them form an idea of their likely research topic, and to identify which department would be the most appropriate for them to be trained in (you can search by discipline or subject area, e.g. 'Global Health')
Department of Global Health and Development
Department of Health Services Research and Policy
Department of Social and Environmental Health Research
You should also look at the list below which provides examples of the research topics which could form the basis of MPhil/PhD or DrPH training.
You should then discuss your ideas with the appropriate Faculty Research Degrees Director, DrPH Course Organiser or the Departmental Research Degrees Co-ordinator.
Examples of potential Research Projects
Health care governance and organisation in the UK
- Governance and autonomy in local health care systems
- Practice-based commissioning: the impact of local contracts in primary care on service and patient outcomes
- The role of the not-for-profit sector in health care in the UK : legal and economic approaches
- The role of organisational and professional regulators in the NHS: legal and economic approaches
- Relationship between the NHS and the private sector in the provision of healthcare in the UK, including financing schemes such as PFI: legal and economic approaches
- Exploring the strategies used by doctors, nurses and other professionals to manage 'joint work' or collaboration in hospital wards in the UK
Patient views & values; patient outcomes; choice
- Patient views on quality of care in routine elective surgery
- Development and validation of health outcome measures
- Patient-reported outcomes in health care, including: quality of life; measurement in health care research/psychometric methods; health technology assessment
- Time preferences and health-affecting behaviour
- Development of decision aids which incorporate quality of care to support the NHS choice agenda
- Implementing patient choice in the English health care system
Evaluation of health care interventions
- Generalisability of health service interventions
- Continuous monitoring of joint prostheses
- Validation of decision-analytic modelling for cost-effectiveness of health care technologies .
Chronic disease
- The economic implications of chronic disease
- Assessing the implications of chronic care delivery systems for the healthcare workforce
- Cost-effectiveness of primary prevention of cardiovascular disease
- Variation in processes of care for patients with chronic illness: assessing the impact of organisational, cultural and system-specific factors .
Communicable diseases
- The framing and application of public health laws to control communicable diseases
- Health system responses to communicable disease control in eastern Europe and/or central Asia
- The cost-effectiveness of vaccinating children against communicable diseases
Nursing
- Nursing work in the context of HIV/AIDS in South Africa: impacts of the anti-retroviral treatment programme rollout in primary care
- The organisation of nursing work in public sector hospital settings in South Africa
Organisation and management of pharmaceutical services
- Changing the culture for medication safety in NHS secondary care
- Skill substitution in primary care pharmaceutical services
- Leadership and leadership development in secondary care pharmaceutical services
Older people's health
- Psychosocial aspects of health and well-being in elderly people
- Elderly people and the health/social care interface in Britain 1930-2000
- Psychosocial aspects of health and well-being in elderly people
Younger people's health
- Anthropological approaches to health research and programmes for young people
- Gender, health systems, and child survival
- Orthodontics and young people
Healthy living
- What can sociology contribute to public health efforts to increase walking?
- Sexual behaviour and behaviour change research
Health and the environment
- Dealing with variability and uncertainty in environmental health models
European and Global health
- The contribution of health to the economy in Europe
- Medical tourism and its implications for health systems development, relationship between health systems, inequalities and public health
- Global health policy processes: the effect of Global Health Initiatives on countries' health systems
- Tobacco control and global health: analysing the internal documents of the tobacco industry .
The conduct of health and medical research
- The ethnography of medical research in Africa
