PhD Studentship: Bridging Data for Equity: Linking Health Records to Address Ethnic Inequities in Mental Health and Social Care

Location of Job

Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neurosciences, King’s College London, Denmark Hill campus, London.

We’re pleased to invite prospective students to apply for an ESRC-funded London Interdisciplinary Social Science Doctoral Training (LISS DTP) PhD scholarship based in the Department of Psychological Medicine, IOPPN, King’s College London, in partnership with Lambeth Council, through the Lambeth Health Determinants Research Collaboration. This is a 3-year PhD starting in October 2025.  The focus of this PhD opportunity will be to work with novel data linkages spanning mental healthcare, social care and census at individual-level. The main purpose of this work will be to understand inequities which impact social care and mental health care pathways, and identify protective factors for the prevention of crisis inpatient admissions to mental healthcare.

PhD Supervisors:

Professor Jayati Das-Munshi, Professor Stephani Hatch and Professor Robert Stewart 

Background:

This project will address knowledge gaps by using ethically approved, person-level linked data from English census, social care, and electronic mental health records from one of Europeʼs largest mental healthcare providers—the first linkages of their kind, in the UK. Our CASE partner, Lambeth Council, is committed to using research to enhance the quality and equity of local services. This project will offer the student a unique opportunity to gain experience in local government and will ensure relevant findings impact local policy.

PhD studentship:

The successful student will be supported to develop critical literature reviews and a conceptual framing relating to ethnic inequalities in secondary mental healthcare crisis care pathways. The student will be supported to develop a secondary data analysis plan and work with a new linkage of data from mental health services in southeast London linked to data from the 2011 census and also linked to adult social care.  You will be expected to be conversant in undertaking quantitative data analyses, and you should be comfortable with developing multivariable regression models (eg. logistic regression, Poisson regression) and you will be supported to develop additional statistical expertise in advanced statistical methods, as appropriate. Working with the data linkages you will identify social and clinical indicators associated with adverse pathways into care.

Essential criteria:

• This is a +3 studentship; you should have a MSc-level degree in a relevant subject (e.g. Epidemiology, quantitative social sciences, statistics, or equivalent). We’ll provide training in the application of advanced statistical methods. You should be able to demonstrate competencies in statistics and be conversant with multivariable regression approaches, (e.g. logistic regression), and able to work in at least one of these: STATA, R, MPLUS.
• You should have a strong understanding of health inequalities, demonstrated through prior undergraduate/ postgraduate training or equivalent.
• You should be committed to involving people with lived experience of mental distress in the work.
• You will be expected to undertake accreditation with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) before accessing the data.
• You will be expected to work on-site (Institute of Psychiatry Psychology & Neurosciences) in our ‘secure lab’. Remote working is not possible due to the sensitivity of the data.

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