Rigour without randomisation: Using natural experiments to evaluate weather-health alerts
Joint CfE-UKHSA seminar discussing how new, more granular administrative records potentially allows for natural experiments to evaluate weather-health alerts.
Natural experiments present a powerful approach for evaluating the impact of real-world policies, programmes and interventions. The webinar will provide an overview of natural experiments and the promise that they hold in evaluating weather-health alerts, due to the increased availability of administrative records datasets at highly granular levels. These datasets are measured with daily frequency over long time periods (i.e. “big data”) on weather and population health.
Drawing on work being undertaken together by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), the Met Office and UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) to evaluate the Adverse Weather and Health Plan (AWHP), it will present four key components of natural experiments to assist decision-making to improve lives: analysis of health impacts using counterfactual methods; analysis of implementation using process evaluation methods; collaboration between decision makers and researchers throughout the study; and real-world public health implications.
Speakers
Paul Coleman
Dr Paul Coleman is a Consultant in Public Health at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), where he serves within the Extreme Events and Health Protection team.
His expertise lies in building systemic resilience to climate-related hazards, including extreme temperatures, flooding, and drought. Paul is responsible for developing national guidance that safeguards the health and social care sector, ensuring the UK is prepared for the public health challenges of a changing climate.
Paul applies an action-research framework to ensure policy recommendations are grounded in academic evidence. He is particularly interested in the translation of academic evidence into actionable public health interventions, aiming to protect the most at-risk communities through evidence-led resilience planning and the continuous evaluation of national health protection strategies. He co-chairs the climate and health NIHR-HPRU research theme with Hugh.
Beth Jakubowski
Dr Beth Jakubowski is a mixed methods researcher, primarily specialising in qualitative research methods and evaluation. Beth has a background in maternal health, evaluation methodology, and health services research. Beth currently work for the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Policy Research Unit in Policy Innovation and Evaluation (PIRU), conducting a variety of evaluations for health policy and health services.
Hugh Sharma Waddington
Dr Hugh Sharma Waddington is an economist and environmental health specialist, focusing on impact evaluations of development and health programmes using randomised, quasi-experimental and mixed-methods designs, systematic reviews and meta-analysis. Hugh’s current work encompasses a range of projects in climate change including the project HPRU3 in Climate Change and Health Security, focusing on evaluating natural experiments of extreme weather adaptation.
Event notices
- Please note this event is virtual only
- Please note that the recording link will be listed on this page when available
Admission
Contact
