Professor Anne Spencer

About me:

Anne Spencer joined the Health Economics Group at the University of Exeter in January 2012. Formerly she worked for 12 years as a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in the School of Economics and Finance, at Queen Mary University of London.

Anne studied Economics at St Andrews University (BSc 1987) and Oxford University (M.Phil 1989). She developed an interest in Health Economics during her two years as an Overseas Development Institute Fellow in the Ministry of Health in Lesotho, Southern Africa. This was followed by a research fellowship in Economics at York University, during which she completed a Ph.D under the supervision of Graham Loomes. Her Ph.D investigated the methods commonly used to elicit preferences for risky treatments.

A common theme of her work is towards developing methodology of health economic evaluation and preference elicitation as well as leading the primary economic evaluation of trails. She has become known for her research around decision making and preference elicitation and the challenges of these methods. Other areas of interest include the application of models to evaluate competing configurations of services. Examples of her work in this area include applications of models to domestic violence and the configuration of neonatal services in England. As part of these applications Anne has experience in developing models alongside clinical trials, from pilot to main trial. This work has helped to highlight the usefulness of developing a pilot model and shows how the economic model can be further refined in the light of new external data sources. Anne's research on the identification and prevention of domestic violence has informed WHO-Europe and National Guidelines for Domestic Violence.

Anne is currently joint-principal investigator on a CRUK funded study – measuring the impact of the NICE suspected cancer guidelines – involving difference-in-differences, quantile and time series regressions. Anne also leads the HE work package of the with EU-funded project, Inclusivity Project, with Professor Brit Grosskopf in the Department of Economics, that explores the behavioural barriers/facilitators to retention and recruitment of disabled and older workers.

Anne is the Health Economics lead for the CRUK CanTest international collaborative which aims to develop the next generation of methodologists and primary care cancer researchers to evaluate interventions to expedite early cancer diagnosis. The £4 Million CanTest award has funded over 10 PhDs and Post-Doctoral Research Fellows. She developed the methodological programme, alongside Professor Yoryos Lyratzopoulos, Professor of Epidemiology at UCL, for the first CanTest International Summer School in Cancer Detection held at Cambridge University, 9th – 14th April 2018. Professor Fiona Walter (Cambridge) and Professor Jon Emery (Melbourne Australia) were the clinical leads for the first CanTest International Summer School in Cancer Detection.

Anne is a member of the Medical Research Council Skills Development Panel and NIHR Development and Skills Enhancement Award Selection Committee. She is also Associate Editor of Health Economics (Wiley) and BMC Diagnostic and Prognostic Research (Springer, Nature).

Interests:

Anne's works on improving the methods to inform policy makers including:

Applying behavioural models to predict patient choice

Applying decision analytic models to forecast the longer term impacts of trials

Measurement and valuation of patient reported health outcomes

Health service research design and implementation of economic evaluations alongside trails

Investigation of methods to calculate the Value of Statistical Life

She is also the lead researcher for the health economics analysis of a number of large trials including early cancer diagnosis (ERICA), exercise interventions (OPERA), domestic violence (IRIS and PREDOVE) and knee pain (TOIB).