Understanding and reducing norovirus transmission in early years settings: economic and behavioural approaches (TURNERD_U27NIHRMED)
Key details
- Application Deadline
- 24 November 2026 23:59 UK Time
- Location
- UEA
- Funding Type
- Directly funded (Home Students Only)
- Start date
- 01 February 2027
- Mode of Study
- Full-time
- Programme type
- PhD
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Welcome to Norwich
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Project description
Primary Supervisor - Mr David Turner - https://research-portal.uea.ac.uk/en/persons/david-turner/
Background
Norovirus is a major cause of infectious intestinal disease (IID) in the UK, with early years childcare settings acting as important amplifiers of transmission. Despite clear public health guidance recommending exclusion of symptomatic children and staff, real-world behaviours often diverge from recommendations. Economic pressures, staffing shortages, parental work constraints, and organisational practices all shape decisions that influence outbreak risk. The HPRU Evidence Theme identified person-to-person transmission and behavioural drivers of norovirus spread as areas where current evidence is weak and where new research would have high policy relevance.
This PhD will address these gaps by integrating health economics, behavioural science, and biological modelling to understand and evaluate existing and potential interventions that could reduce norovirus transmission in childcare settings. The project will complement ongoing HPRU work on childcare transmission dynamics and will be designed to run in parallel with an existing Newcastle-based PhD project.
Overall aim
To identify, understand, and evaluate behavioural and economic factors influencing norovirus transmission in early years childcare settings, and to assess the potential effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of interventions to reduce outbreaks.
Potential objectives (to be agreed with the supervisory team)
- Characterise behavioural drivers influencing parental, guardian and other carers’ decisions to send symptomatic children to childcare.
- Characterise behavioural drivers influencing staff decisions to work while unwell.
- Identify organisational and environmental factors within childcare settings that facilitate or hinder infection control.
- Develop and conduct stated preference or discrete choice experiments to quantify decision attributes for parental, guardian and other carer group.
- Develop and conduct stated preference or discrete choice experiments to quantify decision attributes for early years settings staff decisions.
- Analyse existing datasets, e.g. INTEGRATE study data, to inform model parameters and intervention design.
- Work with biological modellers to integrate behavioural and economic data into microsimulation or discrete event simulation models.
- Evaluate the cost-effectiveness of potential interventions.
- Engage with UKHSA stakeholders to ensure findings are policy-relevant and actionable
Training environment
The student will be based at UEA within the NIHR HPRU in Gastrointestinal Infections, gaining access to:
- A multidisciplinary supervisory team with expertise in health economics, behavioural science, biological modelling, health protection, and evidence synthesis.
- NIHR Academy training opportunities.
- Collaboration and co-supervision with UKHSA scientists, and interaction with the Public and Community Involvement, Engagement and Participation group.
- Existing datasets (e.g., INTEGRATE) and modelling frameworks.
- A vibrant multidisciplinary research environment with seminars, journal clubs, and cross-theme collaboration.
The student will develop skills in qualitative and mixed methods research including behavioural science, health economic evaluation, stated preference methods, biological modelling, data analysis, and policy translation.
Risk mitigation
- Methodological flexibility to match the student’s strengths.
- Early progress supported by existing datasets.
- Ethics planning informed by previous HPRU experience.
Supervisor collaboration
The project will be co-developed across institutions:
- UEA:
- David Turner (Primary Supervisor): health economics, cost-effectiveness modelling, stated preference methods.
- Professor Paul Hunter: infectious disease modelling, public health policy, HPRU leadership.
- Professor Wendy Hardeman: behavioural science, mixed methods, intervention development and evaluation.
- Newcastle University:
- Dr K. Marie McIntyre, Dr. Theodora Commandeur and colleagues: biological modelling, evidence synthesis, dataset access, alignment with parallel PhD.
- UKHSA:
- Dr Valerie Decraene and colleagues: outbreak investigation insights, health protection, policy relevance.
This structure ensures strong interdisciplinary support, policy alignment, and integration with the wider HPRU Evidence Theme.
Entry requirements
At least UK Bachelors (Honours) 2:1 in Economics, Sociology, Psychology, Public Health, Medicine , Biology, Food Sciences, Statistics, Mathematics.
Funding
This PhD project is fully funded by the NIHR for 3 years. Funding includes tuition fees at Home-fee rate, an annual tax-free maintenance stipend starting at £20,409 in the first year, and £1,000 per annum to support research training.