Professor Aki Tsuchiya
Professor of Health Economics, with a joint appointment between the School of Economics and the School of Medicine and Population Health
I am a health economist, but it took me a while to find it. My first undergraduate degree was in law and politics, and then I studied philosophy and ethics.
After an MA in ethics, I wanted to do a PhD in ethics but was turned down and I’m now grateful for the rejection. I was interested in priority setting in life/death situations, which lead to health economics.
After an MA in economics, I was awarded a PhD in 1999 from Kyoto University in Japan. I migrated to the UK as a post-doc and joined the University of Sheffield in 2000 as a Research Associate at the School of Health and Related Research (which is now part of the School of Medicine and Population Health).
My research interests involve putting numbers on things that people may think should not be quantified. I have worked in the area of health state valuation - where we survey members of the public to see how they numerically value different aspects of health.
I have held the joint appointment between the School of Economics and the School of Health and Related Research since 2005, and have been a professor since 2011.
I am very proud of all the graduate students from different backgrounds whom I’ve supervised over the years. It is a great joy to see our graduates making their careers as health economists in the real world.