Congratulations: Dr Joanna Davies awarded prestigious King’s Prize Fellowship
11th September 2025
Dr Joanna Davies, Research Fellow at the Cicely Saunders Institute has been awarded a prestigious King’s Prize Fellowship. The King’s Prize Fellowship is awarded bi-annually to outstanding post-doctoral scientists. It provides 18 to 24 months of funding, including a salary and running expenses. The award aims to support the Fellow’s transition to an independent research career.
As a King’s Prize Fellow, Joanna will continue her work at the Institute, on understanding and addressing geographical variation and intersectional inequalities in the use of hospital-based care in the last year of life.
In England and Wales, the number of deaths each year is increasing and is projected to reach 635,000 in 2040. How we care for people towards the end of life is important to the dignity and quality of life of patients and families and to how well the health and social care system can cope with growing demands and pressure. Most people want to avoid hospitalisations in their last weeks and months of life, but hospitalisations are common and increase rapidly in the months before death. Many hospitalisations in the last months of life could be avoided through better support in the community.
People living in more deprived areas have higher rates of emergency department visits at all stages of life, including in the last year of life. In her earlier research, Joanna looked into the association between ethnicity, deprivation, gender and emergency department visits in the last three months of life in England, though much less is known about geographical variation and these other intersectional inequalities. This project aims to investigate the causes of unwarranted variation in emergency department visits towards the end of life and to work with commissioners and service providers to find ways to reduce these inequalities.
Her past research focuses on inequalities in access to palliative and end-of-life care. Her PhD investigated ‘Patterns and determinants of socioeconomic inequality in palliative and end-of-life care for older adults’.
“It’s an honour to receive this King’s Prize Fellowship to take the first steps in delivering a programme of cutting-edge data science and translational research using routine data to inform more equitable resource distribution and service delivery for people with advanced illness. This work is about bridging the gaps between research and practice by ensuring that our research is responsive to the needs of commissioners and service providers who are working to improve care for patients and families.”
Dr Joanna Davies, social epidemiologist, Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Palliative Care