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Dr. Lorna Roe

Lorna Roe is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Health Policy and Management in Trinity College Dublin and has been working on health economics analyses at The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) since 2013.

Background

She studied Social Science at University College Dublin, graduating with a first-class honors degree in 2007 and in 2008 studied for a Masters in Social Policy Research with the London School of Economics and Political Science. Lorna is specifically interested in how healthcare systems respond to the older peoples’ healthcare needs. For five years, she worked for Age Action Ireland, an Irish charity who advocate for the rights of older people in Ireland. Working in Age Action deepened her understanding of the challenges facing older people in seeking, activating and managing healthcare services which ultimately prompted her return to academia to investigate solutions to these challenges.

Evidence-based healthcare design

The aim of Lornas’ doctoral work was to build an evidence base on the current pattern of healthcare utilisation of frail older people and to use that evidence to inform how we can improve care delivery systems, notably through integrated care programmes. She is particularly interested in frailty, as older people who are frail are at risk of many adverse outcomes such as falls, hospitalization and nursing home admission, and, they often need many different kinds of services (e.g. hospital, GP, homecare etc), and providing these services quickly and reliably is a challenge to the healthcare system. She continues to work on this topic in her postdoctoral work on two funded projects in TILDA, the FOCUS and RADIUS projects, which are detailed below.

In addition to her research, Lorna is the Assistant Director of Teaching and Learning on the Structured Population and Health-services Research Education (SPHeRE) PhD programme and the Local Director of the SPHeRE Postgraduate Diploma in Population Health and Health Services Research. She supervises Masters Students in health economics research projects and lectures on the topics of health policy analyses and the impact of population ageing and frailty on the healthcare system.

Specific Research interests:

• Health policy
• Patient complexity/frailty and healthcare utilisation
• Whole-systems analyses of healthcare systems
• Evidence-based integrated care planning/ healthcare reform
• Healthcare finance and access

Current funded projects

Frailty-related Outcomes and health Care USe (FOCUS) – Co-investigator
This study is investigating patterns and trajectories of frailty-related health service use over three waves of the TILDA study spanning six years and the impact on mortality, health and social outcomes in Ireland. This study is funded by Irish Health Services Executive (HSE Research Award on Ageing) at €100,000.

Retrospective cohort study of healthcare utilisation among ADults with frailty in Ireland and the United States (RADIUS)- Co-investigator
This study is a collaboration between Queens University, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Trinity College Dublin, exploring the patterns of healthcare utilization among frail older people and risk of mortality across three countries. It is funded by the Trinity Faculty of Health Sciences ‘Deans Fund’ at €20,000.

Awards

• 2017- Winner of the ‘Ageing Research Award’, from the Faculty of Health Sciences, Trinity College Dublin
• 2014- Nominated for the ‘Integrated Care Award’ from the International Foundation for Integrated Care
• 2014- Winner of the ‘Presidential Prize Medal’ from the Irish Gerontological Society
• 2013- Winner of ‘Best Overall Oral Presentation’ from the World Congress on Integrated Care
• 2011- Awarded the ‘HRB PhD Scholarship’ from the Health Research Board (HRB)
• 2007- Awarded the ‘Beveridge Scholarship’ from the London School of Economics and Political Science

Professional Memberships

• Member of the Irish Health Economics Association of the Republic of Ireland (2015-)
• Member of the Executive Committee of the Irish Gerontological Society (2014-)
• Member of the Executive Committee of the Irish Social Policy Association (2008-)
• Member of the TILDA Economics Working Group (2012-)

Publications