
Professor Joanna Coast
BA(York), M.Sc.(York), Ph.D.(Bristol)
Expertise
Current positions
Professor in the Economics of Health and Care
Bristol Medical School (PHS)
Contact
Press and media
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Research interests
Jo's research interests lie in the theory underlying economic evaluation (including capability), developing broader measures of outcome for use in economic evaluation (including measures of capability, particularly the ICECAP suite of meaures) and health care decision making (including priority setting). She has previously worked in the areas of the economics of antimicrobial resistance and economic analysis of the organisation of care, including end of life care. She currently holds a Wellcome Investigator Award to develop a life-course approach to measuring capability for economic evaluation of health and social care interventions. This award also incorporates the development of ICECAP measures for children and young people. Jo also has a methodological interest in the use of qualitative methods in health economics and is recognised as an international authority in this field; her edited book on Qualitative Methods for Health Economics was published in July 2017. She has published extensively in all of these areas.
Jo co-directs the MSc in Health Economics and Health Policy Analysis which began in September 2022. She has supervised 18 doctoral students to completion, and is currently supervising four doctoral students in the areas of health care decision making and the capability approach.
Jo is Senior Editor, Health Economics for Social Science & Medicine, and a Non-Executive Director for One Gloucestershire Integrated Care System, for which she chairs the System Resource Committee. She was the Chair of the Scientific Committee for the International Health Economics Association (iHEA) Congress (online) in 2021 and co-chair for the Congress (Basel) in 2019.
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
Drug use in street sex workers: the DUSSK study
Principal Investigator
Role
Co-Investigator
Description
What we found and what this means
Fewer street sex workers took part than expected. This was because many of the women who could have taken part didn’t feel they were…Managing organisational unit
Bristol Medical School (PHS)Dates
01/02/2018 to 31/12/2020
Using qualitative and mixed methods in health economics
Principal Investigator
Description
The visit format was designed with the aim of increasing the chance of sustainability, by proposing visits by both partners, enhancing opportunities for discussions beyond core activities, including junior as…Managing organisational unit
Bristol Medical School (PHS)Dates
22/02/2016 to 31/07/2016
Thesis supervisions
The use of the results from economic evaluation in applied decision-making in the UK health service
Supervisors
Care at the end of life
Supervisors
Face-to-face priority-setting in primary care
Supervisors
Understanding the treatment preferences of older patients deciding between dialysis and conservative kidney management
Supervisors
Publications
Recent publications
01/02/2026Preferences for healthcare decisional control in older people with chronic kidney disease in the UK indicate strong inclinations towards active and collaborative approaches
Clinical Kidney Journal
Self-reporting quality of life in mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease and Lewy body dementia
Social Science and Medicine
Prepare for Kidney Care (P4KC)
A choice experiment of older patients' preferences for kidney failure treatments
Kidney International
"Blanket rules just don’t work"
International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care


