Reflections from a voluntary internship with EHE: Part 1

This summer, after running our first undergraduate Health Economics module, a couple of enthusiastic economics students approached us to ask if there were any opportunities to get some work experience with Edinburgh Health Economics. Whilst we don’t run any formal internship schemes, we thought we could definitely think of some useful projects for the students to get involved with. In this post, one of those students talks to us about the work that she did during her voluntary internship and offers some reflections on how she found the experience overall.

Intern profile

Name: Emma Wilson

Bio: “I recently graduated (virtually!) in Economics from the University of Edinburgh in July 2020 and I am currently working as a Competition Economist for the Financial Conduct Authority. I have had a strong interest in Health Economics since I started working for the NHS in the first year of university in the holidays, and I then took the Health Economics course in fourth year solidifying my interest. My interest resulted in me writing a health/labour market dissertation about gender differences in wages due to health.”

Internship activities

“During my internship I have been working on part of the CORECT-R project. The project aims to create a UK wide Colorectal Cancer Intelligence Hub and identify the opportunities to impact on care to improve outcomes across the UK and provide evidence to guide interventions that will minimise inequalities and improve survival. I have specifically been working with Dr Elizabeth Lemmon on a report on costing methodology heterogeneity called ‘Validating costing methodologies used in the health economic literature of colorectal cancer’. You can view the report here.

The report looks at a cross-section of 20 papers of the most recent health economics literature on colorectal cancer. The studies are compared and contrasted against not only one another, but also against costing methodology criteria that has been laid out in a previous study on costing in health economics. It is concluded that due to ambiguity around costing methodologies and I suggest several ways in which the transparency around costing can be improved: studies should explicitly state whether they use micro, gross, top-down or bottom-up costing, providing clear evidence of how they do so; studies should also provide clarity in their computations and clearly state cost sources, and the identification process of costs used should be made clear. I suggest at the end of my report that a CHEERS type checklist for costing should be created in the future to ensure that costing methodologies are more homogeneous and allow for studies to be easily replicated and generalised.”

Intern reflections

“During my internship my critical literature analysis skill have increased hugely from examining a large number of academic papers and examining them. My academic writing skills have also improved from the constant feedback loop I have had with Dr Lemmon. The autonomy that I have been given to work on the project has been something I have never had before, and I have enjoyed the accountability I have been able to take for my work. The internship has been a great opportunity, and I would highly recommend it to anyone else with an interest in health economics, or in improving their analysis or academic skills.”

Project lead reflections

“From our perspective, it was brilliant to have Emma on board to help with the costing methodologies used within the health economics literature on colorectal cancer. This is an area in which we have found significant heterogeneity and Emma’s work confirms and documents this. Her work will be extremely helpful for the project going forward. Overall, Emma was a pleasure to work with and she has really set the bar for future ‘interns’!” Elizabeth Lemmon

(Image by Quang Nguyen vinh from Pixabay)

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