Public Health
The public health group within CHSS encompasses broad experience and a wide range of public health skills. Our scope is multidisciplinary and we work with a wide range of partners to build the evidence base for improved public health and reduced health inequalities. CHSS and Kent Public Health Department have recently agreed to collaborate and develop an informal research and evaluation team.
The aim of this is to build and strengthen local evidence for preventative programmes and support robust public health commissioning. Proposals on topics such as childhood obesity and evaluation of the Year of Care programme in Kent are under consideration. Other benefits of the partnership include the possibility of CHSS as a formal academic training location for public health speciality trainees.
Our current work falls into a number of areas:
Health intelligence
Current projects include collecting and analysing health and lifestyle survey data for Directors of Public Health in local government and collaborating with third sector organisations to run UK-wide patient satisfaction surveys for hospices.
Previous work covers a broad range of surveys, comparative and performance analyses, service evaluations and literature reviews. We have over 20 years' experience of survey research in Public Health, for example ‘Apple a day’, Healthquest SouthEast and the Welsh Health Survey. We led a partnership with Lille University and public health staff in the NHS and local government in a EU-funded study comparing health, lifestyle and mortality between south east England and northern France.
Another significant area of work has been carrying out comparative analyses of hospital episodes at local and national levels, with the aim of understanding more about inequalities in population health and uneven health service utilisation, the most important being a study of cancer admissions across England and Wales for the Care Quality Commission
Integration and Evaluation of Consumer Involvement in the HTA Programme
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https://iris.ucl.ac.uk/iris/browse/researchActivity/14114
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£103,560, National Coordinating Centre for Health Technology Assessment Description Research Summary Successive cycles of action and reflection since 1997 have adapted systems to support the involvement of patient organisations and charities in the routine procedures for identifying and prioritising research, commissioning research teams and publishing their findings. Methods A mixed methods evaluation employed document analyses, key informant interviews and structured non-participant observations to ascertain the contributions and influence of these outsiders.
Findings 1. Oliver S, Armes DG, Gyte G. (2009) Public involvement influences a national research agenda. The Patient: Patient-Centered Outcomes Research 2 (3): 179-190. 2. Royle J and Oliver S. Consumer involvement in the health technology assessment programme. International Journal of Health Technology Assessment in Health Care 2004, 20 (4): 493-497. 3. Oliver S, Clarke-Jones L, Rees R, Milne R, Buchanan P, Gabbay J,​
PrivMort: the impact of privatization on the mortality crisis in Eastern Europe
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https://iris.ucl.ac.uk/iris/browse/researchActivity/11323
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After the collapse of Communism 3 to 7 million excess deaths occurred, comparable to the toll exacted by Stalin. While public health research has uncovered a great deal about the proximal causes of these deaths, identifying alcohol and psychosocial stress as key causes, incredibly few studies have attempted to address the variation in these proximal causes. Why did people in some countries start to abuse alcohol much more and experience greater stress than in others?
A recent article in The Lancet by the PI linked radical privatization policies to increased mortality via increased unemployment using longitudinal cross-national statistics. This article generated great controversy, and soon critics claimed that with different specifications the model was not sufficiently robust or that the cross-national data could conceal an ecological fallacy or miss another cause. Our study will provide decisive evidence on this debate by proposing a new methodology for studying the impact of econ
Covid19 and what you need to know
Here's a summary of key information and support for students during the pandemic.
Remote study - applying and considerations
Remote study is for students who are significantly impacted by the pandemic, and it is not possible for them to return to campus (e.g. travel restrictions or health concerns).
We fully understand that for some students remote study is the only option and whatever your decision we will continue to support you - we are committed to supporting remote study through to the end of the 2021/22 academic year. However there are important factors you must consider before deciding how you want to study with us. Take the time to consider the following FAQs.
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Please note: If you are an international student studying in your home country and have been granted a Visa, then you must travel to the UK by 30 June 2022 at the latest.