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PhD Studentship – Unequal vaccines? A mixed methods study exploring socioeconomic inequalities in vaccine uptake in the North of England.

The NIHR ARC North East and North Cumbria is pleased to offer this fully-funded, three year PhD studentship, starting September 2021, based with Newcastle University.

The opportunity is linked to our Inequalities and Marginalised Communities theme and will be supervised by Dr Adam Todd, Dr Sarah Sowden, Dr Josephine Wildman and Professor Clare Bambra.

Closing date 20 April 2021

More about the PhD

Vaccinations are widely considered as the most cost-effective public health tools for reducing the burden of infectious disease. Despite increased efforts by the public health and healthcare community at increasing vaccination courage, there is some evidence that the uptake of vaccinations is socioeconomically patterned. This is even more pertinent given the Covid-19 pandemic and the development of the national vaccination programme.

Working in partnership with regional and national stakeholders, this PhD will use quantitative approaches to establish the extent and nature of any inequalities in vaccine uptake, and whether potential inequalities have changed over time. Informed by the quantitative analysis, the PhD will then qualitatively explore the barriers and facilitators to vaccine update from the perspective of patients and healthcare professionals as well as reviewing evidence of what interventions work to reduce (socioeconomic) inequalities in vaccine uptake.

This studentship provides a unique opportunity to perform interdisciplinary, high-impact research within an environment promoting a strong – yet supporting – research culture. The successful candidate will have a strong interest in both developing skills in quantitative and qualitative research methodologies and applying them to the challenges of undertaking applied health research.

Find out more and apply