Joseph Kwon

I am a health economist at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, having started my postdoctoral research career at the department in March 2022. Since January 2024, I am Dementia Research Fellow sponsored by National Institute for Health and Care Research Applied Research Collaboration (NIHR ARC). Since August 2025, I am seconded to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Science Policy & Research team as part of the NIHR Mental Health Translational Research Collaboration (‘Mental Health Mission’). 

My main project for the NIHR ARC fellowship is ‘Decision-making support model for whole-pathway dementia workforce commissioning’ (DEMM-COMM), with additional seed funding from Alzheimer’s Society. DEMM-COMM aims to develop a health economic model of dementia prevention, diagnosis and care which informs workforce commissioning decisions. This involves working with a variety of stakeholders and data sources (qualitative and quantitative) to conceptualise and parameterise the health economic model. Key datasets for model development include English Longitudinal Study of Ageing and Clinical Practice Research Datalink. 

I am also participating in the Bio-Hermes Biomarker Data Challenge hosted by University of Glasgow, where our team is working to analyse the diagnostic and prognostic values of blood-based biomarkers of Alzheimer’s Disease. I will be developing a decision model to evaluate the cost-effectiveness and equity impact of novel blood and digital biomarkers for dementia triage as part of the SANDBOX study. 

As the Mental Health Mission NICE Lead, I am conducting a review of all NICE health technological appraisals of mental health interventions to identify the main methodological challenges for conducting appraisals in this field. This will lead on to stakeholder discussions (NICE committee members, pharmaceutical companies, health economic consulting firms) on some of these challenges.  

I am the co-principal investigator for ‘Development of a PRISMA extension for systematic reviews of health economic evaluations’ (PRISMA-EconEval), funded by NIHR Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB). We aim to produce an extension of the widely used PRISMA guideline to systematic review that is tailored specifically to systematic reviews of health economic evaluations. 

Further projects I am involved in: (1) Health Effects from Infection Sequelae: Tailoring Services and Advancing Guidance (HERITAGE); (2) Optimising the Virtual Hospice: A mixed-methods study of remote palliative care support covering quality improvement, patient experience and health economics (OVH); and (3) IMPROVE PRETERM. For (1), we are designing a prospective health economic evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of specialist clinics for Long COVID and ME/CFS. For (2), this is a programme development grant to set up a prospective mixed-methods evaluation of virtual hospices in the UK. For (3), I am conducting a systematic review on the health economic aspects of preterm birth.  

My PhD was in Public Health, Economics and Decision Sciences at University of Sheffield. The thesis explored the methodological challenges around economic modelling of geriatric public health interventions, focusing on community-based falls prevention as a case study. Key challenges included incorporating capacity constraints, estimating the value of community asset involvement, and evaluating joint efficiency-equity impacts. I hold a Master’s degree in Theology from Oxford where my dissertation made a case for ‘rule of rescue’ as a normative principle in healthcare allocation decision-making, using the philosophical and theological framework of Thomas Aquinas.