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Dr Thomas Cowling

Associate Professor

United Kingdom

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Services Research and Policy (Faculty of Public Health and Policy).

I re-joined this department in September 2023 after spending almost two years in the Department of Non-communicable Disease Epidemiology (Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health). This role was based in the Electronic Health Records (EHR) Research Group and involved work on COVID-19 projects as part of the OpenSAFELY collaboration with the Bennett Institute at the University of Oxford.

During my first period in the Department of Health Services Research and Policy, I completed a Medical Research Council (MRC) Skills Development Fellowship (2018-2021). This Fellowship focused on measures of patient morbidity and the prognosis of cancer patients, using national cancer and hospital data. I also worked on national NHS audits for colorectal and prostate cancer, in collaboration with the Royal College of Surgeons.

I joined LSHTM in 2017 from Imperial College London where I completed degrees in Biomedical Sciences (BSc), Public Health (MPH), and Health Services Research (PhD). My PhD investigated access to general practice services nationally and was funded by a National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Doctoral Research Fellowship.

Affiliations

Department of Health Services Research and Policy
Faculty of Public Health and Policy

Teaching

MSc Health Data Science: I am part of the Programme Committee that leads this MSc and am also a Module Organiser for the ‘Data Challenge’ module. I am also a personal tutor and a project supervisor.

MSc Public Health: I have taught on the Health Care Evaluation, Health Services, and Principles and Practice of Public Health modules of this MSc.

I currently supervise two PhD students:

> Caroline Chesang - Estimating treatment effects using real world data when there are competing risks: applications to causes of death of prostate cancer patients

> Farizeh Jashek-Ahmed - Searching for recurrence of head and neck cancer in electronic health records

I have supervised three completed PhDs:

> Jemma Boyle (2022) - Using national routine data to explore the utilisation and outcomes of multimodal treatment in the management of colorectal cancer

> Matthew Parry (2021) - Use of routinely collected hospital data to explore access to and outcomes from different radiotherapy treatment strategies for locally advanced prostate cancer

> David Wallace (2021) - Liver transplantation as treatment for hepatocellular carcinoma: a national study using linked electronic healthcare records

Current and prospective students are very welcome to contact me.

Research

I work as part of a collaboration between LSHTM and the Royal College of Surgeons of England to evaluate the quality of NHS cancer services in England and Wales. The National Cancer Audit Collaborating Centre (NATCAN) currently focuses on 8 types of cancer, and I have a particular focus on prostate cancer and kidney cancer.

Research Area
Health inequalities
Statistical methods
Health care policy
Health services research
Electronic health records
Data science
Health outcomes
Modelling

Selected Publications

Logistic regression and machine learning predicted patient mortality from large sets of diagnosis codes comparably.
COWLING, TE; CROMWELL, DA; Bellot, A; SHARPLES, LD; VAN DER MEULEN, J;
2021
Journal of Clinical Epidemiology
A novel approach selected small sets of diagnosis codes with high prediction performance in large healthcare datasets.
COWLING, TE; CROMWELL, DA; SHARPLES, LD; VAN DER MEULEN, J;
2020
Journal of Clinical Epidemiology
One-year mortality of colorectal cancer patients: development and validation of a prediction model using linked national electronic data.
COWLING, TE; Bellot, A; Boyle, J; WALKER, K; Kuryba, A; Galbraith, S; AGGARWAL, A; Braun, M; SHARPLES, LD; VAN DER MEULEN, J;
2020
British Journal of Cancer
Physical multimorbidity, health service use, and catastrophic health expenditure by socioeconomic groups in China: an analysis of population-based panel data.
Zhao, Y; Atun, R; Oldenburg, B; McPake, B; Tang, S; Mercer, SW; COWLING, TE; Sum, G; Qin, VM; Lee, JT;
2020
The Lancet Global Health
Assessing the Time-Dependent Impact of Performance Status on Outcomes After Liver Transplantation.
Wallace, D; COWLING, T; McPhail, MJ; Brown, SE; Aluvihare, V; Suddle, A; Auzinger, G; Heneghan, MA; Rowe, IA; WALKER, K; Heaton, N; VAN DER MEULEN, J; Bernal, W;
2020
Hepatology (Baltimore, Md)
Determinants of Variation in the Use of Adjuvant Chemotherapy for Stage III Colon Cancer in England.
BOYLE, JM; Kuryba, A; COWLING, TE; AGGARWAL, A; Hill, J; VAN DER MEULEN, J; WALKER, K; Braun, MS;
2020
Clinical oncology
Patient-Reported Functional Outcomes After Hypofractionated or Conventionally Fractionated Radiation for Prostate Cancer: A National Cohort Study in England.
Nossiter, J; Sujenthiran, A; COWLING, TE; PARRY, MG; Charman, SC; Cathcart, P; Clarke, NW; Payne, H; VAN DER MEULEN, J; AGGARWAL, A;
2020
Journal of clinical oncology
What is the impact of hospital and surgeon volumes on outcomes in rectal cancer surgery?
Boyle, JM; Van der Meulen, J; Kuryba, A; COWLING, TE; Braun, MS; AGGARWAL, A; WALKER, K; Fearnhead, NS;
2023
Colorectal disease : the official journal of the Association of Coloproctology of Great Britain and Ireland
Association between living with children, vaccination, and outcomes from COVID-19: an OpenSAFELY cohort study of 12 million adults in England during 2021–22
COWLING, T; Forbes, H; Wing, K; TAZARE, J; SCHULTZE, A; Morton, C; Bacon, S; MacKenna, B; Walker, A; Hulme, W; Bates, C; Mehrkar, A; Curtis, H; Evans, D; Inglesby, P; Davy, S; Cockburn, J; Parry, J; Hester, F; Harper, S; Douglas, I; EVANS, S; BHASKARAN, K; WILLIAMSON, E; EGGO, R; ... TOMLINSON, L.
2023
Wellcome Open Res
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