Details
- Close date
- No date set
- Academic background
- Business, Health Sciences, Humanities
- Host campus
- Dunedin
- Qualification
- PhD
- Supervisor
- Professor Haxby Abbott, Dr Ross Wilson
Overview
Measuring the health benefits of treatments consistently across a wide range of health conditions and interventions is crucial to ensure equitable and efficient investment across the health system and achieve the best outcomes within the limited healthcare budget.
This HRC-funded project aims to establish a validated health-related quality of life measure suitable to inform such decision making. Specifically, we will validate the SF-6D, a widely-used and internationally-recognised health utility (quality of life) instrument, for the New Zealand population, and derive a 'value set' for the instrument – a scoring algorithm representing the preferences of the New Zealand population suitable for economic evaluation and resource allocation decision making.
A crucial focus of the research is to ensure that the measurement of health-related quality of life is equitable and equally valid for Māori and non-Māori New Zealanders, to inform equitable healthcare policy, funding, and resource allocation decision making. The results of this research will help to ensure the equity and efficiency of healthcare funding and resource allocation decisions, to deliver the best outcomes from the health and wellbeing budget.
The PhD project will be to lead the qualitative validation phase of the research, involving in-depth qualitative interviews or focus groups, thematic analysis and interpretation of findings, and reporting for the evaluation of the cultural validity and appropriateness of the SF-6D instrument in Māori populations.
The student will also contribute to other aspects of the project, including quantitative analysis for the derivation of the value set, community outreach, and/or health system and policy engagement, knowledge transfer, and uptake, depending on their experience and interests.
This project would suit a student with knowledge of hauora Māori and interest in kaupapa Māori research methods, and a passion for using research to inform equitable health policy and funding decisions.
There is funding to support a full-time PhD student for three years from February 2022.