Welsh Assembly Government support for developing health economics infrastructure in Bangor

Health economics is an increasingly important subject in terms of generating evidence of the relative cost effectiveness of health and social care services and in providing policy support to government. It is anticipated that these studentships will lead to the offer of post doctoral research posts by their recipient universities, adding to the critical mass of health economists in Wales.

Recruitment and retention of academic health economists has been and still is a challenge in Wales as well as across the whole of the UK but this initiative will help Wales ensure it continues to develop a sound infrastructure in the discipline. Bangor has already proved that such funding initiatives work, with Dr Barry Hounsome, a WAG-funded PhD staff candidate in 2001, now a research fellow in health economics in CEPhI - the Bangor Health Economics Unit. This WAG initiative also assists the University’s strategy to increase the number of postgraduate research students.

This latest studentship announcement has enabled Bangor to appoint Jo Charles to undertake a PhD looking at the economics of prevention through new parenting programmes for toddlers. Jo comes from a psychology background with an MSc from the School of Psychology at Bangor University. She will be jointly supervised by staff from CEPhI and Incredible Years Cymru, and her programme of study also includes taking CEPhI’s postgraduate module in health economics through the School of Healthcare Sciences. Jo will be presenting her PhD outline at the upcoming biannual meeting of the Welsh Health Economists Group (WHEG) which will be hosted by Bangor University on Thursday 30th April and Friday 1st May 2009.

For further details about health economics or the WHEG meeting, please go to www.bangor.ac.uk/healtheconomics or contact Dr Rhiannon Tudor Edwards, the Director of CEPhI, on r.t.edwards@bangor.ac.uk.