Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Epidemiology ​/ Medical Statistics

Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Epidemiology / Medical Statistics

Understanding suicide risk in clinical and public health contexts

Are you a quantitative researcher who wants to work on two major suicide research projects: one with direct relevance to NHS inpatient care and one with relevance to population mental health? Join UCL’s Division of Psychiatry to work on i) an NIHR-funded project evaluating the effectiveness of suicide prevention interventions delivered on inpatient psychiatric wards, and ii) an AFSP-funded project understanding temporality of suicide risk in relation to life events using Danish registry data.

You will be working on complex challenges that matter

• Analyse large-scale routine mental health and population registry data, including CRIS electronic health record data from C&I, SLaM and up to four additional NHS trust sites, and linked population registry data for Denmark.
• Evaluate whether continuous/intermittent nursing observations reduce the risk of self-harm or suicide during and shortly after psychiatric admission.
• Help develop rigorous target trial emulation and related causal inference analyses in a setting where randomised trials would be difficult.
• Evaluate whether suicide risk increases at specific points in relation to key life events using multivariable regression models and self-controlled case series models
• Contribute to cost-effectiveness and cost-consequence analyses with health economics colleagues.
• Produce evidence that can inform ward practice, patient safety, staff training, policy briefings and clinical guidelines, and public mental health policy.

Professional Growth

• Join a multidisciplinary team spanning epidemiology, medical statistics, psychiatry, nursing, health informatics, health economics and lived experience research.
• Receive support and training in causal inference, self-controlled designs, target trial emulation, EHR/population registry analyses and real-world evidence methods.
• Work with collaborators across UCL, NHS mental health trusts, the North London CRIS team (UCL/North London NHS Foundation Trust), the South London CRIS team (King’s College London/SLaM), Danish Research Institute for Suicide Prevention, University of Oxford, international policy stakeholders and lived experience advisory groups.
• Develop high-impact publications, open and reproducible analytical code, conference presentations and policy-facing outputs.

Flexibility Meets Impact

While based in Bloomsbury, London, we offer blended and flexible working policies.

This role offers an excellent opportunity for a quantitative researcher to make substantial contributions to mental health services research, patient safety, causal inference and applied medical statistics.

What will you be doing?

• Statistical analysis planning - develop and pre-register statistical analysis plans for descriptive epidemiology, target trial emulation and related quantitative analyses.
• Data management and analysis - prepare, clean, document and analyse large-scale routine EHR/population registry datasets and linked outcome data.
• Causal inference - use methods including pooled logistic regression and inverse-probability weighting to address time-varying confounding by indication, and methods including self-controlled case series models to understand temporal shifts in suicide risk Health informatics - work with colleagues on algorithms defining continuous observations, intermittent observation and general observation.
• Collaboration and interpretation
• Health informatics - work with colleagues on algorithms defining continuous observations, intermittent observation and general observation.
• Collaboration and interpretation - work with health economists, clinicians, nurses, lived experience researchers and policy colleagues to interpret and disseminate findings.
• Academic outputs - write peer-reviewed papers, lay summaries, blogs, reports and conference abstracts to reach wide audiences.

Duties and responsibilities

The post holder will undertake quantitative research using large-scale routine mental health datasets. They will plan and execute analyses, lead or contribute to the interpretation and write-up of results, and disseminate findings to academic, clinical, public health, policy and lived experience audiences.

• The post is graded on the non-clinical research staff Pay Scale, Grade 7 (the annual salary which ranges from £45,103 to £52,586, including London Allowance) or Grade 8 (the annual salary which ranges from £54,931 to £62,903, including London Allowance).
• The appointment is funded for two years in the first instance.
• Research Fellows - Appointment at Grade 7 is dependent upon having been awarded a PhD; if this is not the case, initial appointment will be at Grade 6B (salary which ranges from £39,148 - £41,833 per annum) with payment at Grade 7 being backdated to the date of final submission of the PhD Thesis.

Appointment at Grade 7 or Grade 8 will depend on experience and on meeting all the criteria in the person…