Department of Health
Richmond House, the Department of Health's headquarters in Whitehall.
Improving the Health and Social Well Being of the Nation
How many jobs are you considering where you will be part of an organisation:
- Responsible for the stewardship of the NHS and public health system - with a yearly public expenditure of over £100billion and a million employees?
- That can affect the quality of life of every individual in England?
This is the opportunity the Department of Health (DH) can offer you, at a time when the provision of health care and social services is being improved, reorganised and modernised through the implementation of new polices and practices.
Operational Research in the Department of Health
The goal of OR analysts in the DH is to help managers and policy makers make better decisions, take surer actions and improve health and adult social care system performance. We use quantitative and qualitative business modelling, system simulation, scenario analysis and other approaches to support problem solving. We are active in a wide range of high-profile projects, for example on work to:
- Deliver primary health care in new ways (for instance, walk-in centres, NHS Direct helpline)
- Estimate the number of people who might become ill in a flu pandemic, and the knock-on impacts on the health service
- Make a case for increased funding for health and adult social care, and how money should be distributed between different areas
- Analyse the NHS pay bill and estimate how much it will grow by in coming years
- Deal with risk (for instance, sexually transmitted diseases)
- Assess the population's need for social care
- Use screening (for instance, for cervical cancer) to improve public health
- Assess the effectiveness of different vaccination strategies
Quarry House, the Department of Health's offices in Leeds.
What to Expect
The DH Operational Research service comprises some 45 specialists who provide analytical support to policy colleagues. We work in multidisciplinary analytical teams, mainly with economists and statisticians, distributed between the different policy teams at DH. Roughly half of us are based in London working more on public health and social care issues and the other half are in Leeds where the emphasis is more on NHS matters. We work in collaboration with Departmental policy colleagues, university researchers and external consultants. Staff are encouraged and assisted to develop their professional and other skills throughout their career.
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