We are delighted to introduce Roxana Pollack as one of our Data Impact Fellows. Roxana shares her background, her current work and research, and what she hopes to get out of the Fellows scheme.
Background
I am in my second year of an MRC funded PhD in social epidemiology at the School of Health and Wellbeing in the University of Glasgow. My passions for public health and interests in research on health inequalities were informed by my multidisciplinary academic background and volunteering work.
I became interested in health and health inequalities through taking modules covering wellbeing and population health during my undergraduate degree in geography and political science at the University of Dundee.
I also volunteered at a non-profit global health organisation (SOGH) and a Dundee-based charity (Feeling Strong), where I got insights into third sector work on health promotion and improving young people’s mental health struggles.
While studying for my MSc in global public health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, I conducted research for my thesis on precarious employment and health. This further solidified my desire to focus on social, socioeconomic and environmental determinants of health and my particular interest in understanding mental health outcomes.
Prior to my PhD, I worked as a research assistant on a range of projects related to public health interventions, policy simulation and systems science methodologies (for example antimicrobial resistance, 20-minute neighbourhoods, child poverty). These diverse theoretical and methodological approaches to exploring health issues allowed me to build a broad understanding of my research interests within public health.
Bringing together these academic, professional and voluntary work experiences, I was motivated to pursue my PhD project at to focus on the effects of work, unemployment, mental health and subjective wellbeing.
My research project
My PhD project investigates the mental health and subjective wellbeing outcomes of unemployed individuals transitioning back into paid employment.
My aim is to assess and better understand the causal relationship between this transition and mental health outcomes, while also focusing on the role of job quality at the point of reemployment.
The literature on unemployment is clear about its negative effects on mental health and subjective wellbeing. However, there is still a lack of clarity on whether a transition back into any job would improve mental health compared to staying unemployed. With the rise of non-standard forms of employment and precarious work (e.g. temporary agency work, holding multiple jobs) in recent decades, job quality is an important factor within these transitions.
Considering the focus of policy efforts on reemployment by the UK and other national governments, it is important to create more evidence for better understanding the health effects of transitioning back to work and its interaction with job quality.
Currently, I am working on a systematic review to synthesise and quantify the evidence on effects of moving from unemployment into employment with different levels of job quality on health, subjective wellbeing and health risk behaviours. Findings from this review will provide a useful summary of previous research and a theoretical foundation to inform my approach to my other research aims.
I am planning on conducting an emulated target trial to investigate the causal mental health effects of this employment transition and compare outcomes depending on job quality.
I will be using secondary data from multiple waves from the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) for this analysis. After scoping potential datasets, the comprehensive and detailed data in the UKHLS allows me to investigate employment transitions, employment histories and mental health outcomes in my target population.
For the last part of my project, I am interested in exploring potential policy scenarios using microsimulation modelling in the SimPaths model. This provides a novel way to model possible changes in the policy landscape and investigate their potential impacts on mental health and subjective wellbeing outcomes of individuals who transitioned back to employment.
Future plans
After finishing my current systematic review paper, I will be moving on to my empirical analysis to answer my other research aims. The systematic review and all other publications from my project will be listed and accessible on my ResearchGate profile.
While I am still towards the beginning of exploring and generating evidence within my PhD project, I view learning how to best communicate insights to policymakers and public stakeholders as an important part of my PhD journey.
My project will be using methods typically inaccessible to non-academic audiences. Breaking these complex methods and their findings down into accessible and meaningful pieces of information will be an exciting challenge.
Since I hope to create evidence that can be used to inform policy action, I am interested in using my time as a Data Impact Fellow to explore how to disseminate my future findings to diverse audiences.
The support provided by the UK Data Service will be beneficial to learn more about effective approaches to engage stakeholders and public audiences throughout my project. Connecting with other Fellows interested in proactively thinking about and creating impact through their research also provides a great opportunity to discuss these ideas.
About the author
Roxana is a second-year doctoral candidate and honorary research assistant at the University of Glasgow.
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