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
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.
Selected Publications
