4-year PhD Studentship
To determine how effective and cost-effective are a range of strategies for preventing unintentional falls, poisonings and scald injuries in pre-school children
Department of Health Sciences, University of Leicester
Stipend £15,090 pa + UK/EU tuition fees
Supervisors: Professor Alex Sutton ([log in to unmask]) and Dr Nicola Cooper ([log in to unmask])
Applications are invited for a four year full time PhD studentship as part of the ‘Keeping Children Safe at Home’ Research Programme funded via a National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) programme grant. The programme comprises of 6 research questions:
Q1) Which interventions are effective in protecting against Falls (F), Poisonings (P) & Thermal (T) injuries?
Q2) What are the NHS and family costs of F, P & T injuries?
Q3) What injury prevention interventions are being undertaken by Children's Centres (as part of their role in delivering child health services) and partner organisations (PCTs, Fire and Rescue Services, Voluntary Agencies, etc) to prevent F, P & T injuries?
Q4) What are the barriers and facilitators to implementing F, P & T injury prevention interventions amongst agencies, professionals and community members?
Q5) How effective and cost-effective is implementing an Injury Prevention Briefing (IPB) for one exemplar injury prevention intervention?
Q6) How effective and cost-effective are a range of strategies to maximise uptake of interventions for preventing F, P & T injury based on decision analytic models incorporating data generated from research questions 1-5 and systematic reviews of the published literature.
This PhD will focus on Q6 (above) and the main objective will be to develop and evaluate decision analytic models to assess the most cost-effective strategies to prevent F, P & T injuries. Specific tasks will include:
• Review previous literature on decision modelling in accident prevention • Develop decision model structures for different types of injury (e.g. falls, poisonings and thermal) • Parameterise the decision models using data obtained from:
o A review of systematic reviews of quantitative evidence, updated with evidence from recent primary studies, the case-control studies (Q1), o the survey of injury prevention activity (Q3), o surveys of injured and uninjured children (Q2), and o data on costs of interventions will be obtained from existing safety equipment schemes.
Data analyses will be customised for different populations (e.g. deprivation, ethnicity, single-parent families etc) where there is evidence of differential uptake, or effectiveness of interventions amongst those groups. Data on differential effectiveness will be obtained from recent meta-regression analyses undertaken by the applicants and from more recent primary studies. Models will be stochastic and will take account of uncertainty around, and correlation between, parameter estimates.
The findings from these analyses will inform Injury Prevention Briefings produced for all interventions found to be cost-effective.
Applications including a Curriculum Vitae, brief research statement outlining why you are interested in the PhD, and names and contact details of two academic referees should be sent to Branka Besevic (e-mail: [log in to unmask]) by 25th June 2010.
Funding Notes
The studentship will cover full time tuition fees (at the UK/EU rate only) for four years and provide a tax-free stipend starting at £15,090 each year. A Research Training Support Grant will also be available.
Applicants must have, or expect to obtain, a first or upper-second class honours degree in a relevant subject from a UK university or the equivalent. Applicants whose first language is not English must have achieved an IELTS score of at least 6.5 or hold a degree taught in English.
Alex Sutton
[log in to unmask]
Tel: [+44/0] 116 229 7268
Fax: [+44/0] 116 229 7250
Professor of Medical Statistics
Department of Health Sciences
University of Leicester
2nd Floor (Room 214e), Adrian Building
University Road
Leicester
LE1 7RH
UK
http://www.hs.le.ac.uk
http://www2.le.ac.uk/colleges/medbiopsych
Times Higher Education Award for Outstanding Student Support 2009-10
Times Higher Education University of the Year 2008-9
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