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Applied Health Research Unit (AHRU)

Driving improvements in health and social care through translational research and methodological innovation.

We generate evidence to guide the design and delivery of effective and equitable health and social care to improve population health.  We do this by conducting epidemiological and health services research, randomised trials, evidence synthesis, mixed methods and qualitative research.

Involving the public and professional stakeholders

We have active partnerships with patients, unpaid carers and the public, the NHS, local authorities, social care staff and policy makers to ensure our research reflects peoples’ priorities, experiences and values and our research has the largest impact in terms of population health. 

Our research

We aim to optimise the equitable delivery of health and social care and reduce the burden of disease and care needs. Learn more.

We have developed a number of interactive dashboards to supplement our research. Find out more.

Funders

Teaching and training

We contribute to the education and training offered by Oxford Population Health and the University of Oxford: 

 

Oxford Population Health

 

University of Oxford

Research Support Tools

  • Translational Data Science - A programme of applied data science developments needed for high-quality, large-scale research that will lead to improvements in healthcare.

  • Cochrane Person Centred Health Systems and Public Health - A key focus of this group is evidence syntheses to guide effective, equitable and accessible health care. 

  • DISCERN - The DISCERN questionnaire is a valid and reliable way of assessing the quality of written information on treatment choices for a health problem. 

Our team

Applied Health Research Unit logo

Selected publications

Related research themes

Cancer remains a leading cause of death. Our research spans causes, prevention, treatment trials, screening, and long-term outcomes—shaping global guidelines and improving survival rates.
Cancer
The emergence of new digital technologies is allowing huge quantities of information on health exposures and outcomes to be captured, stored, and analysed using advanced statistical techniques. ‘Big data’ will provide new ways to conduct research and offers the potential of a dramatic increase in the scale and efficiency of clinical studies.
Big data
Health economics research explores the economic aspects of health and disease including the determinants of health, the economic consequences of ill health, the costs and benefits of prevention and treatment, and the financing, design and evaluation of health systems.
Health economics
Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) were developed over 30 years ago as short self-complete questionnaires to find out about aspects of health of most concern to people. PROMs are increasingly used in clinical trials and since 2009 have been used by the NHS to assess health outcomes of some elective surgical procedures. Their role as a health outcome measure for long-term conditions is likely to be more complex and needs to be assessed.
Patient Reported Outcomes and Experience
Our research focuses on the role of vascular risk factors in dementia and on the methodology of assessing cognitive status in very large-scale studies.
Dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases