Rhys Thomas
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About
Overview
Rhys Llewellyn Thomas is a Lecturer in Health Economics at City St George’s, University of London. His research uses applied microeconometric and causal inference methods to primarily study health-related behaviour, healthcare use, and the allocation of resources within health systems. His work spans health behaviour, inequalities in treatment and access, healthcare utilisation, and comparative health-system performance.
A further strand of his research examines how research resources are allocated and the effects of those allocations mechanisms. This includes studying the shift from conventional peer review towards lottery-based funding mechanisms, and exploiting random allocation within funding lotteries to estimate the causal impact of research funding on subsequent research activity and outcomes.
Qualifications
- PhD in Economics, University of Southampton, United Kingdom, 2022
- MSc in Economics, University of Southampton, United Kingdom, 2017
- BSc in Economics, University of Southampton, United Kingdom, 2016
Employment
- Senior Health Economics Researcher, University of Oxford, United Kingdom, October 2025 - August 2026
- Fellow by Special Election, University of Oxford, United Kingdom, January 2024 - present
- Health Economics Researcher, University of Oxford, United Kingdom, January 2024 - September 2025
- Early Career Teaching and Research Fellow in Economics, University of Oxford, United Kingdom, October 2021 - January 2024
Publications
Publications by category
Journal articles (4)
- Scott, A.M., Amies‐Cull, B., Oguzman, E., Webster, J., Thomas, R.L., Mason, A.... Shepperd, S. (2026). Social and Health Conditions That Drive the Need and Demand for, Use of and Expenditure on Social Care in the UK: A Systematic Review. Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods, 4(5). doi:10.1002/cesm.70093
- Thomas, R.L., Roope, L.S.J., Duch, R., Robinson, T., Zakharov, A. and Clarke, P. (2026). Lottery or Triage? Controlled Experimental Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic on Public Preferences for Allocation of Scarce Medical Resources. Medical Decision Making, 46(1), pp. 102-115. doi:10.1177/0272989x251367777
- Thomas, R.L., Millett, C., Sousa Soares, R.D. and Hone, T. (2024). More doctors, better health? A generalised synthetic control approach to estimating impacts of increasing doctors under Brazil's Mais Medicos programme. Social Science & Medicine, 358, pp. 117222-117222. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.117222
- Thomas, R.L. and Mentzakis, E. (2024). The direct and spillover effects of diabetes diagnosis on lifestyle behaviours. Health Economics, 33(5), pp. 952-970. doi:10.1002/hec.4803