Cam Donaldson

Cam Donaldson
Glasgow Caledonian University | GCU · Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health

PhD

About

457
Publications
95,316
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
20,264
Citations
Additional affiliations
May 2010 - present
Glasgow Caledonian University
Position
  • Yunus Chair in Social Business & Health
July 2002 - April 2010
Newcastle University
Position
  • Health Foundation Chair in Health Economics, and Director (from 2005)
July 1998 - June 2002
University of Calgary
Position
  • Svare Chair in Health Economics
Education
October 1991 - June 1996
University of Aberdeen
Field of study
  • Economics
September 1982 - August 1983
University of York
Field of study
  • Health Economics
September 1979 - June 1982
University of Nottingham
Field of study
  • Economics

Publications

Publications (457)
Article
Full-text available
Background Engaging with the public can influence policy decisions, particularly towards more radical policy change. While established research exists exploring public perceptions on causes of health inequalities, much less exists on how to tackle health inequalities in the UK. Despite an emphasis on ‘lived experience’, currently no study has focus...
Article
Full-text available
Background People’s time is a finite resource and a valuable input that ought to be considered in economic evaluations taking a broad, societal perspective. Yet, evaluations of interventions focusing on children and young people (CYP) rarely account for the opportunity cost of time in this population. As a key reason for this, health economists hav...
Article
Full-text available
People on low-incomes in the UK develop multiple long-term health conditions over 10 years earlier than affluent individuals. Financial diaries -new to public health- are used to explore the lived experiences of financially-vulnerable individuals, diagnosed with at least one long-term condition, living in two inner-city London Boroughs. Findings sh...
Article
Full-text available
We aimed to synthesise knowledge on the relative social value of child and adult health. Quantitative and qualitative studies that evaluated the willingness of the public to prioritise treatments for children over adults were included. A search to September 2023 was undertaken. Completeness of reporting was assessed using a checklist derived from J...
Article
Full-text available
Background There is an international move towards greater integration of health and social care to cope with the increasing demand on services.. In Scotland, legislation was passed in 2014 to integrate adult health and social care services resulting in the formation of 31 Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs). Greater integration does not eli...
Article
Full-text available
An ageing population has placed strains on the capacity and capability of health and social care systems. Innovative solutions have thus been sought to inject capacity and capability to deliver care and well-being services to older people more efficiently and effectively. Over the last two decades, governments have actively encouraged third sector...
Article
Full-text available
Government investment in preparing for pandemics has never been more relevant. The COVID-19 pandemic has stimulated debate regarding the trade-offs societies are prepared to make between health and economic activity. What is not known is: (1) how much the public in different countries are prepared to pay in forgone GDP to avoid mortality from futur...
Article
Full-text available
Background and objectives: Valuing children's health states for use in economic evaluations is globally relevant and is of particular relevance in jurisdictions where a cost-utility analysis is the preferred form of analysis for decision making. Despite this, the challenges with valuing child health mean that there are many remaining questions for...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Trade-offs abound in health care yet depending on where one stands relative to the stages of a pandemic, choice making may be more or less constrained. During the early stages of COVID-19 when there was much uncertainty, health care systems faced greater constraints and focused on the singular criterion of ‘flattening the curve’. As COVID-19 progre...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
There is a move, internationally, towards greater integration of health and social care. In principle, integration reduces budgetary boundaries which can facilitate sharing of resources across health and social care. Part of the agenda is for local delivery organisations to alter the balance of care from acute to community environments. To facilita...
Article
Full-text available
Poverty, poor housing and poor health are complexly interconnected in a cycle that has proven resistant to intervention by housing providers or policy makers. Research often focuses on the impacts of the physical housing defects, particularly upon rates of (physical) illness and disease. There has been comparatively little research into the ways in...
Article
Full-text available
Introduction: In any health system, choices must be made about the allocation of resources (budget), which are often scarce. Economics has defined frameworks to aid resource allocation, and program budgeting marginal analysis (PBMA) is one such framework. In principle, patient and public values can be incorporated into these frameworks, using tech...
Article
The UK's response to the pandemic The UK has recorded one of the highest death rates associated with COVID-19 globally, whether measured as deaths that are directly attributable to COVID-19 or by excess mortality. The reasons for this high rate are complex and not yet fully understood, but elements of the UK Government response have been criticised...
Article
Full-text available
The health and care sector plays a valuable role in improving population health and societal wellbeing, protecting people from the financial consequences of illness, reducing health and income inequalities, and supporting economic growth. However, there is much debate regarding the appropriate level of funding for health and care in the UK. In this...
Article
Full-text available
Trade-offs abound in healthcare yet depending on where one stands relative to the stages of a pandemic, choice making may be more or less constrained. During the early stages of COVID-19 when there was much uncertainty, healthcare systems faced greater constraints and focused on the singular criterion of “flattening the curve.” As COVID-19 progress...
Article
Full-text available
Context ‘What does ‘The Public’ think?’ is a question often posed by researchers and policy makers, and public values are regularly invoked to justify policy decisions. Over time there has been a participatory turn in the social and health sciences, including health technology assessment and priority setting in health, towards citizen participation...
Article
Full-text available
Introduction Willingness to pay (WTP) is used to generate information about value. However, when comparing 2 or more services using standard WTP techniques, the amounts elicited from participants for the services are often similar, even when individuals state a clear preference for one service over another. An incremental approach has been suggeste...
Technical Report
Full-text available
This is the final report of the FinWell London research project which aimed to review the ways in which money and health interrelate in the lives of people in urban places, such as the London boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark. This work offers an analysis of how, why and for whom financial health and long-term conditions interact and recommends wa...
Article
The widening health gap between the best and worst-off in the UK requires innovative solutions that act upon the social, economic and environmental causes of ill-health. Initiatives such as microcredit have been conceptualised as having the potential to act on the social determinants of health. However, pathways that lead to this impact have yet to...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose: As the provision of public services in many advanced welfare states has increasingly come to be marked by competition, social enterprises have actively been encouraged by governments to become involved in the delivery of public services. While the evaluation of complex public health interventions has arguably become increasingly more sophi...
Article
Full-text available
Despite denials of politicians and other advisors, trade-offs have already been apparent in many policy decisions addressing the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and its social and economic consequences. Here, we illustrate why it is important, from a wellbeing perspective, to recognise such trade-offs, and provide a framework, based on the econom...
Article
Full-text available
Background: The role of housing as a social determinant of health is well-established, but the causal pathways are poorly understood beyond the direct effects of physical housing defects. For low-income, vulnerable households there are particular challenges in creating a sense of home in a new tenancy which may have substantial effects on health a...
Article
Full-text available
As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continues to unfold there is an untold number of trade-offs being made in every country around the globe. The experience in the United Kingdom and Canada to date has not seen much uptake of health economics methods. We provide some thoughts on how this could take place, specifically in three areas...
Article
Full-text available
Financially vulnerable, low-income individuals are more likely to experience financial exclusion as they are unable to access financial services that meet their needs. How do they cope with economic instability, and what is the role of social networks in their coping strategies? Using financial diaries, we explore the day-to-day monetary transactio...
Article
Full-text available
The oft-applied assumption in the use of Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) in economic evaluation, that all QALYs are valued equally, has been questioned from the outset. The literature has focused on differential values of a QALY based on equity considerations such as the characteristics of the beneficiaries of the QALYs. However, a key characte...
Article
Full-text available
Abstract Background Trainee research collaboratives (TRCs) have pioneered high quality, prospective ‘snap-shot’ surgical cohort studies in the UK. Outcomes After Kidney injury in Surgery (OAKS) was the first TRC cohort study to attempt to collect one-year follow-up data. The aims of this study were to evaluate one-year follow-up and data completion...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Ileus is common after elective colorectal surgery, and is associated with increased adverse events and prolonged hospital stay. The aim was to assess the role of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) for reducing ileus after surgery. Methods: A prospective multicentre cohort study was delivered by an international, student-...
Article
Full-text available
Choice‐based stated preference methods, such as time trade‐offs (TTOs), are used to establish health state utilities informing healthcare allocation. However, little is known about the presence of (position‐dependent and precedent‐dependent) sequence effects in the valuation of health states, despite techniques requiring respondents to evaluate sev...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose and setting: Despite the label "generic" health state utility instruments (HSUIs), empirical evidence shows that different HSUIs generate different estimates of Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) in the same person. Once a HSUI is used to generate a QALY, the difference between HSUIs is often ignored, and decision-makers act as if 'a Q...
Article
Background: The development of a nurse-led approach to managing epilepsy in adults with an intellectual disability (ID) offers the potential of improved outcomes and lower costs of care. We undertook a cluster randomised trial to assess the impact on costs and outcomes of the provision of ID nurses working to a designated epilepsy nurse competency...
Article
Full-text available
Housing Associations in many countries exhibit increasing levels of ‘hybridity’, as reductions in state financing for social housing, exacerbated by austerity policies since the 2008 crash, have instigated ‘enterprising’ approaches to maintaining income. Alongside this, hybrid organisations have emerged in the Private Rented Sector (PRS), respondin...
Chapter
It is well documented that individuals who are materially worse-off have poorer health and subjective wellbeing. Despite their limited means, we also know these same individuals can have complicated financial lives. However, it is not clear how individuals’ strategies for managing their wealth impact on broader aspects of their wellbeing. In this c...
Article
Full-text available
Objectives: To understand approaches to priority setting for healthcare service resource allocation at an operational level in a nationally commissioned but regionally delivered service. Design: Qualitative study using semistructured interviews and a Framework analysis. Setting: National Health Service dentistry commissioning teams within subr...
Article
One response to the major societal challenge of financial exclusion in the United Kingdom (UK) is microcredit lending for enterprise. Typically delivered via Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFIs) in the UK, these lending institutions can be conceptualised as ‘alternative’ economic spaces. Yet the nature of their alterity is unclear as...
Article
Full-text available
Since the late 1990s social enterprises have been increasingly utilised as a means of delivering of health and social care services. However, there is little evidence on if, and how, provision by social enterprise might achieve positive health outcomes, particularly in comparison to other modes of delivery. In this paper, we draw upon the multiple...
Article
Full-text available
Background Health inequalities in the UK have proved to be stubborn, and health gaps between best and worst-off are widening. While there is growing understanding of how the main causes of poor health are perceived among different stakeholders, similar insight is lacking regarding what solutions should be prioritised. Furthermore, we do not know th...
Article
Full-text available
In many countries, social enterprise has been introduced into a competitive market-oriented environment as a substitute for publicly owned services, particularly in healthcare. In the United Kingdom, evidence for this move seems to derive from case studies where social enterprise operates in collaboration – as opposed to competition – with publicly...
Article
Background: Priority setting is necessary where competing demands exceed the finite resources available. The aim of the study was to develop and test a prioritization framework based upon programme budgeting and marginal analysis (PBMA) as a tool to assist National Health Service (NHS) commissioners in their management of resources for local NHS d...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Background There is a move, internationally, towards greater integration of health and social care. Integration, it is argued, should reduce budgetary boundaries and facilitate sharing of resources across health and social care. At local levels, delivery organisations need to alter the balance of care from acute settings to people’s own home or sim...
Conference Paper
Background Health inequalities in the UK have proved to be stubborn, and health gaps between best and worst-off are widening. While we have an understanding of how the main causes of poor health are perceived among different stakeholders, similar insight is lacking regarding what solutions should be prioritised. Furthermore, we do not know the rela...
Article
Full-text available
Background Resources in any healthcare systems are scarce relative to need and therefore choices need to be made which often involve difficult decisions about the best allocation of these resources. One pragmatic and robust tool to aid resource allocation is Programme Budgeting and Marginal Analysis (PBMA), but there is mixed evidence on its uptake...
Data
Table A1: Full list of demographics and responses by viewpoint Table A2: Descriptive statistics by statement
Article
Full-text available
An emerging stream of literature has focused on the ways in which social enterprises might act on the social determinants of health. However, this previous work has not taken a sufficiently broad account of the wide range of stakeholders involved in social enterprises and has also tended to reduce and simplify a complex and het- erogeneous set of o...
Article
Full-text available
Background People with an intellectual (learning) disability (ID) and epilepsy have an increased seizure frequency, higher frequencies of multiple antiepileptic drug (AED) use and side effects, higher treatment costs, higher mortality rates and more behavioural problems than the rest of the population with epilepsy. The introduction of nurse-led ca...
Article
Full-text available
BACKGROUND: People with an intellectual (learning) disability (ID) and epilepsy have an increased seizure frequency, higher frequencies of multiple antiepileptic drug (AED) use and side effects, higher treatment costs, higher mortality rates and more behavioural problems than the rest of the population with epilepsy. The introduction of nurse-led c...
Article
Full-text available
Preference elicitation studies reporting societal views on the relative value of end‐of‐life treatments have produced equivocal results. This paper presents an alternative method, combining Q methodology and survey techniques (Q2S) to determine the distribution of 3 viewpoints on the relative value of end‐of‐life treatments identified in a previous...
Article
Criteria used by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to assess life-extending, end-of-life (EoL) treatments imply that health gains from such treatments are valued more than other health gains. Despite claims that the policy is supported by societal values, evidence from preference elicitation studies is mixed and in-depth...
Article
Innovative interventions that address the social determinants of health are required to help reduce persistent health inequalities. We argue that microcredit can act in this way and develop a conceptual framework from which to examine this. In seeking to evaluate microcredit this way we then examine how randomized controlled trials, currently consi...
Article
Social enterprises–businesses that work for social benefit rather than for the maximization of financial returns to shareholders or owners–could potentially prove to be an innovative and sustainable way of tackling 'upstream' social determinants of health. However, empirical work focusing upon how, and to what extent, social enterprise-led activity...
Article
Full-text available
Background Adolescent men have a vital yet neglected role in reducing unintended teenage pregnancy (UTP). There is a need for gender-sensitive educational interventions. Objectives To determine the value and feasibility of conducting an effectiveness trial of the If I Were Jack Relationship and Sexuality Education (RSE) intervention in a convenien...
Article
Objectives: Protest responses, whereby respondents refuse to state the value they place on the health gain, are commonly encountered in contingent valuation (CV) studies, and they tend to be excluded from analyses. Such an approach will be biased if protesters differ from non-protesters on characteristics that predict their responses. The Heckman...
Article
Governments across Europe are required to make decisions about how best to allocate scarce health care resources. There are legitimate arguments for eliciting societal vales in relation to health care resource allocation given the roles of the general public as payers and potential patients. However, relatively little is known about the views of th...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose This intentionally polemical paper will re-examine what is meant by social enterprise and try to assert its role within the current economic system. It is well over a decade since John Pearce’s Social Enterprise in Anytown was first published. Since then the term ‘social enterprise’ has been used in multiple ways by politicians, practitione...
Article
Full-text available
In adults with intellectual disability (ID) and epilepsy there are suggestions that improvements in management may follow introduction of epilepsy nurse led care. However, this has not been tested in a definitive clinical trial and results cannot be generalised from general population studies as epilepsy tends to be more severe and to involve addit...
Article
Priority setting and resource allocation, or PSRA, are key functions of executive teams in healthcare organizations. Yet decision-makers often base their choices on historical patterns of resource distribution or political pressures. Our aim was to provide leaders with guidance on how to improve PSRA practice, by creating organizational contexts wh...
Article
Full-text available
Many complex intervention trials fail to show an intervention effect. Although this may be due to genuine ineffectiveness, it may also be the result of sub-optimal intervention design, implementation failure or a combination of these. Given current financial constraints and the pressure to reduce waste and increase value in health services research...
Article
Since its introduction to the USA, the Triple Aim is now being adopted in the healthcare systems of other advanced economies. Verma and Bhatia (2016) (V&B) argue that provincial governments in Canada now need to step up to the plate and lead on the implementation of a Triple Aim reform program here. Their proposals are wide ranging and ambitious, l...
Conference Paper