Five discipline-hopping internship projects available for 2014
Posted on 31 October 2013
Capturing the health and environmental costs of chronic disease risk factors, Hilary Graham (Health Sciences), Piran White (Environment), also collaborating with Richard Cookson (CHE).
Chronic diseases are the primary cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, they are also inextricably linked with environmental degradation.
The lifestyle predictors of chronic disease, such as sedentary behaviour, ‘junk’ diets and cigarette smoking, are major drivers of environmental degradation through the economic, land use and transport systems with which they are associated. Degraded environments, in turn, can increase individual exposure to contaminants that increase the risk of chronic disease.
There are well-developed methods to assess the health and healthcare burden of chronic disease but, as yet, we lack frameworks and methods that additionally capture the environmental costs.
The internship focuses on this methodological challenge. Building on UoY research strengths in public health (multiple risk behaviours), environmental change (e.g. carbon footprints of ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ diets) and health economics (economic evaluation). It will:
(i) scope methods to estimate the environmental costs of health-damaging lifestyles
(ii) explore how these could be integrated with existing methods for estimating health and healthcare costs to enable estimation of the full costs (health and environmental) of behavioural risk factors for chronic disease.
Skills acquired: Depending on the person's background, the intern will either gain skills in epidemiological methods (to measure the health burden of behavioural risks) or in the methods of economic evaluation and impact assessment used for health and environmental policies.
Candidate background: The internship requires excellent quantitative skills plus a PhD in either social epidemiology or health economics, together with some knowledge of environmental science.
For further details of for an informal chat, please contact Professor Hilary Graham by email (hilary.graham@york.ac.uk) or Tel: +44 (0)1904 321934.
Using data sonification to promote public health risk communications, Sandra Pauletto (Theatre, Film and TV), Amanda Mason-Jones (Health Sciences)
Building on the recent success of the 3Sixty project “Is the world listening?”, the team led by Sandra Pauletto (sound design, sonification) and Amanda Mason-Jones (public health) proposes to further explore data related to the chronic health of adolescents using sound design, data sonification (using sound to display data), and music, with the aim to promote public engagement.
This project will explore the best ways to present health risk data so that the result is both engaging and accurate. It will utilise film music and sound design methods widely understood by audiences (e.g. the ability to direct a listener’s attention and communicate important elements of a message) to support data sonification. The project’s outputs will be a methodology and a set of strategies for presenting data that will be transferable to other datasets.
Skills acquired: The intern will acquire skills in health risk research and methodologies, with a focus on adolescent epidemiological data in the area of chronic disease, and in sonification design and evaluation.
Candidate background: A postdoctoral researcher with a background in film music and sound design interested in applying sound solutions to the communication of health risks. Practical experience in relevant media (film, radio) would be advantageous.
For further details of for an informal chat, please contact Dr Sandra Pauletto by email (sandra.pauletto@york.ac.uk) or Tel: +44 (0)1904 325223.
For more information visit www.york.ac.uk/c2d2/internships/proposals-2014/#chronic. To apply visit the University jobs page.