Amy Barker, Predoctoral Fellow, CHE
Amy spent 8 years as an NHS Doctor, the majority of which she spent in psychiatry. In 2023 she left clinical practice to undertake a 2-year NIHR Pre-Doctoral Fellowship in health economics. She completed her Masters in Health Economics at the University of York in 2024 and currently works in the Health Policy Team and the York Centre for Health Economics (CHE).
email: amy.baker
Our 60-second interview with Amy:
Could you please tell us what work you do in the field of mental health?
Mental Health is one of the research strengths of health policy team at CHE. I haven’t been with the team for long, but so far I have been involved in research regarding the costs associated with effective and quality mental health care.
What do you find most rewarding and inspiring in this work?
Mental health causes a huge amount of individual suffering and disability and affects not only individuals but society. Yet there still isn’t equity in terms of provision of services for mental vs physical health conditions. Health economics generates research which can be impactful for policy-makers and potentially make a difference in delivering more effective and/or equitable care.
What is the most challenging or complicated aspect of this work?
We often use large data sets to conduct our research. This can be helpful, because we have information about large numbers of people for example, all people who have accessed secondary mental health care services. However these data sets sometimes do not contain all the information about someone’s care or condition that we would like to know. Additionally linking data sets for example mental health and primary care data sets can be challenging.
What impact do you hope your work is having - or can potentially have?
My most recent research has focused on the costs associated with the quality of children and young people’s mental health services. Children and young people’s mental health is of particular interest to me as mental health difficulties in childhood can affect a child across the rest of their life in many different areas. I would like to understand better difficulties in accessing mental health care in children and young people as well as the impact access difficulties may have on a child’s use of other services. Hopefully this can inform policy makers where future spending may be most impactful.
Could you share with us one piece of advice that you follow for your own mental health?
It is so hard to give just one piece of advice about good mental health, especially as it can be very personal. However, as someone who sometimes struggles with sleep, just one small thing I do is to make sure I don’t have my phone (or any other screen) in the bedroom. For me this has only been part of the solution, which has taken lots of trial and error, however it has helped me in many other areas of my life including being kinder to my friends and loved ones. As a bonus I have now read many more books!