Assessing the long-term health, social and educational costs of prematurity: evidence from representative English cohorts
2025/17
background
With improvements in maternal and neonatal healthcare, the number of babies born prematurely (birth at less than 37 weeks gestation) is increasing. In the UK, the proportion of babies born prematurely is 7.6%, higher than in other Western European countries. Prematurity poses a serious risk to a baby’s health as many organs will not have fully developed, with consequences potentially stretching over their lifetimes. A negative association has been found to exist between gestational age at birth and the risk of subsequent health and developmental problems, such cerebral palsy and hearing/vision problems. Therefore, the costs to the health and social care systems, as well as to the education sector are likely to be considerable. Although there is plenty of evidence showing the adverse health and education challenges of prematurity, there is limited evidence on the overall costs to these sectors, and that of particular conditions associated with prematurity, such as cerebral palsy or hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy.
RESEARCH EXPERIENCE, RESEARCH METHODS AND TRAINING
This doctoral programme will provide experience and training in literature review methods, data management and statistical methods to handle and synthesise large datasets including ECHILD, which collects information on hospital care, education and social care, and the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD), which captures contacts with the National Health Service (NHS), including primary and community care. The student will also apply econometric methods to handle resource use and cost information, using panel data and statistical methods to evaluate differences across regions in England, and across conditions associated with prematurity. The student will conduct a programme of work that will involve:
- A comprehensive review of the literature to identify previous studies assessing the costs of prematurity in the UK and elsewhere.
- The use of routine datasets to quantify the likely health, social and education costs of prematurity in England.
- The use of appropriate econometric and statistical techniques to understand within-regional and within-condition variations associated with the cost of prematurity in England.
FIELD WORK, SECONDMENTS, INDUSTRY PLACEMENTS AND TRAINING
Training in advanced statistics and econometric methods, programming, and scientific writing will be provided. The candidate will be encouraged to attend seminars, workshops and courses offered by the department and the University. There will be opportunities to present work-in-progress seminars to colleagues in the department and present research outputs at relevant international/national conferences.
PROSPECTIVE STUDENT
This project would suit a candidate with a strong interest in working with large, centrally-linked, representative datasets, who is dynamic and can work independently to progress the project between supervision meetings. The candidate will have a background in epidemiology, health economics or health policy with a proven record of quantitative skills (mathematics, statistics, economics and epidemiology) and experience in a research environment in an academic or private sector.