Professor Sam Watson

Department of Applied Health Sciences
Professor of Biostatistics

Contact details

Email: s.i.watson@bham.ac.uk

Address: Murray Learning Centre
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Professor Sam Watson is a Professor of Biostatistics in the Department of Applied Health Research. His interests are in evaluation of interventions for public health, health services, and policy. He leads methodological research into novel approaches to evaluation, including evaluation of interventions exhibiting spatial effects and adaptive cluster trial designs. He is also currently PI of the NIHR funded BRIDGE study evaluating virtual wards for patients with COPD in the West Midlands; and statistical lead for trials of: improving cancer referrals in primary care in Kenya and Nigeria (PRIMED; NIHR), mental wellbeing intervention for patients with type I diabetes (D-STRESS; NIHR), and, continuous monitoring for women in labour in Nigeria, Rwanda, Pakistan, and India (IMPALA-2; Gates Foundation).

Qualifications

PhD in Health Sciences, University of Warwick, 2014
MSc in Health Economics, City University of London, 2011
BSc. (Hons) in Natural Sciences, University of Bath, 2010

Biography

Professor Sam Watson is a Professor of Biostatistics in the Department of Applied Health Research. His interests are in evaluation of interventions for public health, health services, and policy in both the UK and globally. He leads methodological research into novel approaches to evaluation. Current work includes leading NIHR funded research into evaluation of interventions exhibiting spatial effects, with a particular focus on novel technologies to prevent the transmission of malaria, and adaptive cluster trial designs.

Professor Watson is PI for the NIHR funded BRIDGE study evaluating virtual wards for patients with COPD in the West Midlangs. In addition, he is currently statistical lead for several trials and evaluations including: improving cancer referrals in primary care in Kenya and Nigeria (PRIMED; NIHR); mental wellbeing intervention for patients with type I diabetes (D-STRESS; NIHR); and, continuous monitoring for women in labour in Nigeria, Rwanda, Pakistan, and India (IMPALA-2; Gates Foundation).

He is the Applied Health lead for the College's Fellowship Academy, Associate Editor of BMJ Quality & Safety and Trials, and serves on various funder panels.

Postgraduate supervision

Applied statistics: experimental design, cluster trials, spatial statistics

Publications

Highlight publications

I. Watson, S 2021, 'Efficient design of geographically-defined clusters with spatial autocorrelation', Journal of Applied Statistics. https://doi.org/10.1080/02664763.2021.1941807

Watson, SI, Lilford, RJ, Sun, J & Bion, J 2021, 'Estimating the effect of health service delivery interventions on patient length of stay: a Bayesian survival analysis approach', Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C (Applied Statistics), vol. 70, no. 5, pp. 1164-1186. https://doi.org/10.1111/rssc.12501

Watson, S, Girling, A & Hemming, K 2021, 'Design and analysis of three-arm parallel cluster randomized trials with small numbers of clusters', Statistics in Medicine, vol. 40, no. 5, pp. 1133-1146. https://doi.org/10.1002/sim.8828

Watson, SI, Dixon-Woods, M & Lilford, RJ 2020, 'Randomised evaluation of government health programmes does present a challenge to standard research ethics frameworks', Journal of Medical Ethics, vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 34-35. https://doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2019-106003

Recent publications

Article

Singh, SP, Winsper, C, Alam, NB, Bella-Awusah, T, Currie, G, Fola-Bolumole, O, Giacco, D, Gill, P, Goutham, S, Iyer, SN, Kalha, J, Lohumi, I, Madan, J, Moroni, D, Omigbodun, O, Pathare, S, Srinivasan, SP, Smith, S, Thakur, JS, Rangaswamy, T, Tuomainen, H, Watson, S & Jilka, S 2026, 'A hybrid implementation-effectiveness study of a school-based intervention for promoting health and well-being in low-resource settings: the ISOBAR study protocol', Frontiers in Psychiatry, vol. 17, 1823889. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2026.1823889

Debaty, G, Ribes, S, Ray, P, Chouihed, T, Desseigne, N, Usseglio, P, Serre, P, Pradeau, C, Bounes, V, Roupioz, T, Lucas, A-S, Giolito, D, Zamour, C, Boyer, C, Hubert, H, Savary, D, Tazarourte, K, Freund, Y, Watson, S, Hemming, K, Lamhaut, L & Labarère, J 2026, 'A Multifaceted Intervention to Increase Bystander CPR Rates after Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest: a Stepped-Wedge Cluster Randomised Controlled Trial', The Lancet Public Health.

Watson, SI 2026, 'Estimation of the Log Gaussian Cox Process Model with Point and Aggregated Case Data: The rts2 Package for R', R Journal, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 144-168. https://doi.org/10.32614/RJ-2026-012

Hall, JA, Watson, SI, Bishop, J, Wang, Y, Shaw, JF, Taljaard, M & Hemming, K 2026, 'Protocol for a review of statistical methods used to estimate risk ratios and risk differences in parallel cluster randomised trials', Trials. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13063-025-09395-4

Alumbugu Tsaku, P, Udo, SO, Sunday, P, Meka, A, Chinonso Ugwu, L, Oladejo, A, Akinyemi, J, Omigbodun, A, Choudhury, S, Sartori, J, Ilozumba, O, Watson, S & Lilford, R 2025, 'A randomised controlled trial of raw honey for the healing of ulcers in leprosy in Nigeria', PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, vol. 19, no. 12, e0013454. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0013454

Hemming, K, Hall, J, Copas, A, Watson, S, Taljaard, M & Hooper, R 2025, 'Covariate adjustment in cluster randomised trials: a practical guide', BMJ, vol. 391, e084194. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2025-084194

Watson, SI & Smith, TA 2025, 'Design and analysis of randomized trials to estimate spatio-temporally heterogeneous treatment effects', Journal of the American Statistical Association. https://doi.org/10.1080/01621459.2025.2527424

Comment/debate

Smith, TA & Watson, SI 2026, 'Spillover in dengue trials', The Lancet Infectious Diseases, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. e77-e77. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(25)00716-9

Preprint

Watson, SI, Hancock, P, Fraser-Govil, J, DeWalt, K & Smith, TA 2026 'Embracing Spillover: Spatial Effects in Experiments' arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.06506

Watson, SI & Fraser-Govil, J 2026 'Identification of causal policy effects for spatial exposure fields' arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.14503

Watson, SI & Martin, J 2026 'Two-stage Adaptive Design Cluster Randomised Trials' arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.05561

Rego, RT, Barman, AK, Wagner, A, Carlson, B, Boulton, ML, Rana, GK, Watson, SI, Raqib, R, Lee, H, Waljee, AK & Islam, MS 2025 'Awareness of HIV, HPV, and Gonorrhea, and acceptance of vaccines against them, among displaced persons and their host communities in Bangladesh' Research Square. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-6051041/v1

Review article

D-Stress Study Group 2026, 'Group-based interventions to reduce diabetes distress in adults with type 1 diabetes: A rapid realist review of the Reduce and TunedIn interventions', Diabetic Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1111/dme.70242

Kachapila, M, Watson, S, Pinkney, T, Hall, JA, Andronis, L & Oppong, R 2025, 'Economic considerations in designs and modifications of multiarm, multistage adaptive and adaptive platform randomized controlled trials: A systematic literature review', Value in Health, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 477-488. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jval.2024.10.3849

Thompson, J, Watson, SI, Middleton, L & Hemming, K 2025, 'Estimating relative risks and risk differences in randomised controlled trials: a systematic review of current practice', Trials, vol. 26, 1. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13063-024-08690-w

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