Population Health and Health Services

RCSI research aims to understand health, diseases and their determinants, and develop methodological approaches for population health research. This involves researchers, with a diverse range of backgrounds and specialities, analysing the current issues affecting human health and health services from different perspectives.

It brings together clinicians, pharmacists, epidemiologists, biostatisticians, biologists and public health professionals with a common objective of understanding, safeguarding and improving the health of human populations and individuals through education, cooperation and research.

Pioneering research is currently being carried out in several research areas including:

• Ageing
• Cardiovascular disease risk assessment
• Chronic disease management
• Clinical prediction rules
• Computerised clinical decision support systems (CDSSs)
• Control and prevention of diseases in resource-poor areas
• Depression
• Health behaviours
• Health service policy
• Human resources for health
• Patient safety
• Pharmacy policy
• Physiotherapy
• Primary care
• Quality of life measurement
• Sexual health
• Sexually transmitted infections
• Solar irradiation of water
• Wound care and tissue viability

RCSI leads the HRB Centre for Primary Care Research, which aims to enhance patient safety in terms of prescribing, diagnostics and therapeutic approaches utilising information and communication technology.

Similarly, the HRB-funded StrokeCog project aims to ‘model and modify the consequences of stroke-related cognitive impairment through intervention’.

The University also plays a leading role in European and international partnerships with researchers, clinicians, public and private organisations that aim to improve understanding of health and translate population health research findings into policy and practice.

Examples of this include the RCSI Skin Wounds, and Trauma (SWaT) Research Centre, which specialises in world-leading research in the field of wound healing and tissue repair, with a specific emphasis on pressure ulcer prevention and management; and EU Horizon 2020-funded programmes SURG-Africa, a four-year implementation research project to scale up safe accessible surgery for rural populations in Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia, and WATERSPOUTT, which aims to provide safe drinking water using Solar Disinfection (SODIS) to communities in rural Africa.