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Staff Profile

Dr Andrew Kingston

Senior Lecturer in the Epidemiology of Ageing

Background

BACKGROUND

As a Chartered Statistician with a PhD in statistical epidemiology, I specialise in using complex longitudinal data and advanced statistical techniques to gain a deeper understanding of how health outcomes evolve over time, particularly with respect to the development of specific diseases and the occurrence of multimorbidity.

My principal area of technical interest relates to statistical methods that are applicable to complex longitudinal data that have the capacity to identify temporal trends and how factors impact/shape those trends. My mathematical expertise centres on methodology used to analyse longitudinal continuous and categorical data and microsimulation.

VISION

To understand:

  1. The specific pathways through which biology, disease, lifestyle factors and sociodemographic characteristics interact across the life-course to shape multimorbidity and health trajectories.
  2. Ways in which age-related functional decline can be compressed to the shortest possible window before death, leading to better quality of life for older people by compressing their period of dependency.

PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS, ESTEEM INDICATORS & PRIZES

  1. Chartered Statistician (registration number 115879 / revalidated June 2021)
  2. Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society
  3. Fellow of Newcastle University Policy Academy
  4. Member of the ONS Expert Advisory Group for health projections modelling and the development of a Health Index
  5. Visiting Fellow of the Australian National University (2016-2018)
  6. Dhole-Eddlestone Memorial Prize for the strongest paper published in Age and Ageing in 2019 - Kingston, A., Robinson, L., Booth, H., Knapp, M., Jagger, C. and MODEM project, 2018. Projections of multi-morbidity in the older population in England to 2035: estimates from the Population Ageing and Care Simulation (PACSim) model. Age and ageing, 47(3), pp.374-380.
  7. Specialist Collaborator at the Nova Scotia Centre on Aging (Mount Saint Vincent University, Nova Scotia, Halifax)
  8. Invited teacher for the Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR) – University of New South Wales - Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA) - 2019


  


Research

Research areas:

  1. Understanding pathways to disability, dependency and multimorbidity in older people.
  2. Understanding how disability and multimorbidity is shaped by exposures to risk factors across the life-course and drivers of health inequality.
  3. Developing disability risk prediction methodology.
  4. Using microsimulation to project future prevalence and incidence of health outcomes, particularly multimorbidity (2+ diseases).
  5. Methods of calculating health expectancies.
  6. Causes of the male-female disability survival paradox.

I am an investigator on several research projects, including:

  1. Principal investigator at Newcastle University for the multimillion-pound Healthy Ageing Trailblazer, Homes for Living, offering a variety of in-home solutions to support independent living - in collaboration with EON.
  2. Co-investigator for the Newcastle 85+ Study, which is the first and largest study of its kind examining health outcomes in individuals aged 85 and over.
  3. Co-investigator of the Advanced Care Research Centre: Ageing in Place - exploring factors that enable people to age in the place they consider home.
  4. Co-investigator for the Policy Research Unit on Older People and Frailty - I lead several initiatives that focus on understanding the relationship between factors such as multimorbidity and socioeconomics and their impact on health expectancies.
  5. Co-investgator of North and South: Regional Health Inequalities in England – investigating the deep-rooted and long-term regional health inequalities, specifically the 'north-south health divide' in England.
  6. Co-investigator of Extending Working Lives for People with Musculoskeletal Conditions – working with Keele university to develop an indicator of Healthy Working Life Expectancy.
  7. Collaborator on the AWESSoM study (Ageing Well through Eating, Sleeping, Socialising and Mobility Programme) - working with Auckland University to study early detection of functional deficits using self-reported and sensor-collected data.

Member of the steering committee for the Newcastle University Centre of Research Excellence in Ageing and Inequalities.

I am the Ageing and Geroscience theme lead for Newcastle University’s Population Health Sciences Institute.

I am co-director of the Newcastle University Centre for Research Excellence in Mobility and Transport (Transport, Society and Place theme lead).

Member of the Office for National Statistics Expert Advisory Group in health projections.

I am the UK lead for the TULIPs consortium (Towards Understanding Longitudinal Studies in Older People) – collaborating with a team of experts from Japan, the Netherlands, and New Zealand to combine data sources and study the ageing process using metanalytic techniques, with a focus on cross-national differences.

Google Scholar






Teaching

I lead Evaluative Methods in Health Services Research (HSC8054) on the suite of public health programmes for the Population Health Sciences Institute.

I teach on the Epidemiology module for the Biomedical Science programme.

I supervise several PhD, MSc, MSci, MRes, MPH and Undergraduate project students. 

I support several personal tutees.

I'm interested to hear from, and discuss research ideas with, any prospective PhD students.

Publications