Dr Hannah Bromley

Identifying the utilities and disutilities associated with the overdiagnosis and overtreatment of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) of the breast for use in the economic evaluation of breast screening programmes

H.Bromley photo

Supervisor’s names: Dr Carolyn Nickson, Professor Bruce Mann, Professor Dennis Petrie (Monash University), Dr Daniel Rea (University of Birmingham), Professor Tracy Roberts (University of Birmingham)

Hannah is undertaking a joint PhD studentship between the University of Birmingham (UK) and University of Melbourne (Australia) as part of the Universitas 21 initiative.  Misplaced policy decisions about breast cancer screening programmes may exist unless the decision process explicitly includes the harm related to the overdiagnosis of some women. The PhD will identify the utilities and disutilities associated with the overdiagnosis and overtreatment of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) of the breast, a low risk condition identified at breast cancer screening. Health state utility values capturing the risk of unnecessary treatment will be used to inform a model based economic evaluation to explore whether the explicit inclusion of the harms relating to overdiagnosis changes the cost-effectiveness of the current recommended breast screening strategy.