Health Promotion, Policy and Economics

We have pioneered the development of methods to assess the cost-effectiveness of health interventions, and we carry out innovative research on health promotion and understanding behaviour change (e.g. in relation to smoking cessation and breastfeeding promotion programmes).

Case Study: Development of Techniques for Assessing the Impact from Health Research

Brunel’s Health Economic Research Group’s (HERG) research on developing and applying techniques for assessing research impact (payback) has been funded globally since 1993 by various funding organisations, to demonstrate to policy makers and the public how their investments in research benefits society. Our research has a wide-reaching impact. First, internationally, health research funding bodies have adopted and adapted the Payback Framework in their evaluation strategies. In 2020 the framework was highlighted in a WHO review of ways to strengthen health research systems. Second, many stakeholders have made extensive use of the findings of payback studies when lobbying for public expenditure on health research. Governments, public research funding bodies and medical research charities, from the UK to Australia, use the findings to inform decisions regarding the levels and distribution of health research funding. Our research has been used by the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and others to advocate the embedding of research activity research within health systems and to understand and reduce the time-lag between early research and its translation into improved healthcare. Time-lag research is also being used to analyse the rush to develop a vaccine for COVID-19.

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