Associate Director Health Economics - Population Health Improvement

Please also refer to the attached Job Description Reporting to the Deputy COPHI and Director of Strategy, the Associate Director of Health Economics provides senior system leadership and expert economic insight for strategic planning, commissioning, and resource allocation across the Population Health Improvement Directorate and the wider Cluster, ensuring decisions improve health outcomes, reduce inequalities, and deliver clear value for money.

The role applies advanced health economic methods, including cost-effectiveness, budget impact, and other modelling and evaluation techniques, to guide prevention, optimise care pathways, support sustainable models of care, and ensure resources deliver the greatest benefit to patients and populations. The post-holder establishes and maintains methodological standards for economic modelling and evaluation, ensuring analyses are robust, transparent, reproducible, and ready to inform executive and board-level decisions.

Quality assurance processes are embedded across the system to promote best practice and confidence in decision making. The Associate Director works with internal teams and external partners to apply economic evidence to key decisions, including business cases, service options, resource allocation, performance monitoring, and long-term planning, while providing leadership and guidance to build analytical capability and ensure rigorous methods are consistently applied, resulting in better-informed decisions and improved outcomes for patients and communities.

The post-holder develops and maintains partnerships with national agencies, universities, research organisations, professional networks, local government, and the voluntary and community sector. These collaborations support the development and application of robust methods, accelerate innovation, and enable the sharing of knowledge and best practice, ensuring evidence is translated into tangible improvements in patient care and population health. The Associate Director represents the Cluster in regional and national forums, communicates complex economic issues clearly to senior stakeholders, and strengthens the evidence base for policy, strategy, and commissioning.

The role ensures decisions at all levels are informed, equitable, and value-driven. Through leadership, technical excellence, and partnership working, the Associate Director ensures health economics functions as a strategic asset for the Cluster, directing resources to where they add the greatest value, supporting value-based commissioning, improving patient outcomes, and reducing unwarranted variation and inequalities.