Complex Connections: Simulating Interventions for Multimorbidity Prevention and Levelling-up Equity (SIMPLE)
Supervisors:
Dr Jonathan Stokes, School of Health & Wellbeing (University of Glasgow)
Dr Bhautesh Jani, School of Health & Wellbeing (University of Glasgow)
Prof Alison Heppenstall, School of Social & Political Sciences (University of Glasgow)
Summary:
Multimorbidity has a clear socio-economic gradient. Those in more deprived areas experience earlier onset and higher prevalence. It is well-known that our local environments can, positively or negatively, influence our health-related choices and behaviours. Many of the multimorbidity interventions to date, though, have been implemented in healthcare settings, with mixed results.
Policy focus is turning increasingly towards prevention of disease onset, such as ‘Levelling up’ interventions to tackle (health) inequalities more broadly. The academic primary care community likewise outlined “prevention of disease onset” as one of their top research priorities. However, we don’t yet know what impact these prevention efforts, if any, are likely to have on multimorbidity prevalence, which conditions co-occur, and knock-on healthcare management implications.
This project aims to build a complex systems model of multimorbidity onset/progression able to:
(i) simulate potential impacts of place-based policy options to prevent this, and
(ii) to forecast resulting health inequality impacts.
The successful candidate will work to develop these methods, supervised by researchers working in multimorbidity research, and with methodological expertise. You will be integrated within a wider team working on developing similar models to examine economic determinants of health and health inequality impacts of the 20-minute neighbourhood across Scotland.