This may be defined as research into all aspects of health technologies and the delivery of health care, and is becoming increasingly more important as it becomes necessary to have reliable information on which to base decisions on the allocation of limited resources, decisions which may well have an ethical component. A priority is to develop trial methodology, including meta-analysis, to assess the effectiveness of treatments.
Evaluative studies incorporate effectiveness, acceptability and cost.
This programme is expanding as the department is the lead centre for the MRC Health Services Research Collaboration . The Department's research programme is concerned with lifecourse epidemiology - the ways in which exposures at different stages of the lifecourse interact to produce patterns of chronic disease. For example, low birth weight has been found to be associated with increased risk of coronary and respiratory disease in late adulthood. Chronic disease epidemiology is now being extended to examine the way in which exposures, including biological and genetic factors, accumulate and interact throughout life. This research is based upon the study of a series of major cohorts, and several more are currently being constructed.