Improving adolescent health and wellbeing will contribute to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 3 ‘ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages’. Y-Check is an innovative strategy for health check-up visits during adolescence in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). The approach is innovative and novel, because, in most LMICs, including Zimbabwe, few adolescents have any promotive or preventive contacts with the health system. The strategy will involve the screening and treatment/referral adolescents for common conditions through health check-up visits in younger (10-13y) and older (16-19y) adolescents. Adolescents will only be screened for conditions with an accurate and acceptable test and a locally-accessible effective intervention e.g. mental health, HIV, vision and hearing, anaemia. The following definition of adolescent wellbeing has been proposed ‘Adolescents thrive and are able to achieve their full potential’ (Ross DA et al, JoAH 2020). The effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the intervention will be evaluated through a prospective intervention study in 4 communities, up to 6 primary schools, and up to 8 secondary schools in Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe. The Y-Check study in Zimbabwe is funded through a UKRI-funded Future Leaders fellowship to Aoife Doyle (Feb 2021- Jan 2025) and a Fondation Botnar multi-country study of adolescent check-up visits coordinated by WHO, Geneva (2022-2024).
The proposed PhD project is an economic analysis of this novel complex intervention aimed at improving adolescents’ wellbeing and academic achievement (Y-Check). The successful PhD candidate will develop and test new methods to measure and evaluate the impact Y-Check and will assess its cost-effectiveness.
The project will build on extensive previous work led by Giulia Greco on adapting, developing and testing wellbeing measures for use in economic evaluations of complex interventions, and on previous work by John Jerrim on the measurement of academic achievement.
Eligibility requirements
Applicants must meet minimum LSHTM entry requirements.
These studentships are open to applicants assessed as both ‘Home’ and ‘Overseas’ fee status. For further information about Fee Status Assessments please see the School’s policy and procedure document.
Subject areas
- Health economics
- Psychometrics
- Economic evaluation
- Education evaluation and assessment
- Adolescent health and wellbeing
- Mixed methods
Further information
For any queries regarding the project please contact Dr Giulia Greco at: [Email Address Removed], copying in Dr Aoife Doyle at: [Email Address Removed].
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