PhD Study: Evaluating the impacts of Greater Manchester devolution on population health
What are we trying to do?
This PhD is evaluating the effects of Greater Manchester devolution on population health and exploring the underlying mechanism, to assess whether Greater Manchester devolution has led to more efficient and equitable health and care organisations from a quantitative aspect.
Why is it important?
The decentralisation of health and social care from national to local levels is a consistent focus of policymakers as a way to meet the rising and diverging needs of local people, since it empowers local authorities to design locality-based policies better matched to their own circumstances rather than one size fits all nationwide policies.
Greater Manchester’s devolution deal and accompanying localised policies offer a great opportunity to study the effects of localised approaches to population heath.
Greater Manchester has a strong commitment to reduce health and care inequalities; with Greater Manchester becoming a Marmot City Region that is committed to breaking down service silos and investing in prevention, including health behaviors and commissioned an independent report on inequalities which highlighted the presence of intersecting inequalities and the need to better understand their roles in shaping policy outcomes.
The PhD will generate crucial evidence on the most successful policies and their mechanisms, overall showing whether Greater Manchester devolution has led to more efficient and equitable organisation of health and care, from the aspect that whether and how it has ultimately influenced population health. It will generate valuable knowledge to inform future decision-making in England and elsewhere, in order to achieve more efficient health and social care systems.
How are we doing it?
This PhD study is looking to answer three research questions:
- What is the impact of devolution on an individual’s experienced health outcomes, such as self-assessed general health, health impacts on daily life and activities, mental health status. These outcomes are not available in administrative data.
- What are the possible explanations and underlying mechanisms that could explain how devolution impacts population health? (i.e., which policies targeting wider determinants of health such as health behaviors may have contributed to this?)
- How does devolution contribute to the reduction of inequalities in health outcomes within the GM population?
Who are we working with?
Downlaodable resources:
More information:
Yao Wei (PhD Student)