About
Constance Viehbeck is an ESRC-funded PhD candidate in the Department of Health Policy at LSE, researching how pharmaceutical research and regulation shape health equity.
Her work combines quantitative and qualitative methods, with a particular focus on the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and how its approval and post-market decisions affect women and ethnic minorities. She investigates how the representation of these groups in clinical trials shapes what we know about the safety and efficacy of new drugs for them. As regulators worldwide grant faster market access to new medicines, her research asks whether expedited pathways serve the diverse populations who ultimately use these drugs.
She is currently working within the LSE Pharmaceutical Policy Lab, in collaboration with the Harvard-MIT Center for Regulatory Science, examining the evidence underpinning drug approval decisions across the regulatory lifecycle - work supported by a scholarship from the LSE Phelan United States Centre. Constance also holds a World Heart Federation fellowship supporting AI-driven cardiovascular health research in low- and middle-income countries. She holds an MSc in Global Health Policy from the LSE and a BA in Philosophy & Economics from the University of Bayreuth.
Her single-authored commentary on expedited approvals and adverse drug reactions in women, published in The Lancet, was among her first contributions to this field and drew attention to the equity consequences of expedited regulatory pathways - a theme her doctoral research now develops in greater depth.
Dissertation title: Expedited Approvals, Equity, and Regulation
Dissertation supervisors: Dr Huseyin Naci, Professor Elias Mossialos
Publications:
- Viehbeck C. Expedited approvals and adverse drug reactions in women. The Lancet. 2024;403:2289–2290.https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)02353-X/fulltext