Meet the team

Prof Tom Marshall, Professor of Public Health and Primary Care, Unviersity of Birmingham

Tom’s interests are mainly in health services research. He has longstanding research interests in the prevention of cardiovascular disease in primary care and in particular in the use of electronic primary care records to improve care. More recently he has developed interests in the use of electronic primary care records to assist the early diagnosis of colorectal cancer. Tom also has interests in quality improvement and he is a co-investigator in a large clinical trial of a fixed-dose, combination therapy (Polypill) for prevention of cardiovascular disease in Iran.

Prof Kate Jolly, Professor of Public Health and Primary Care, Unviersity of Birmingham

Professor Kate Jolly is a Professor of Public Health and primary care, Deputy Head of the School of Health and Population Sciences and Head of the Department of Public Health, Epidemiology & Biostatistics.

Kate has published research papers in scientific journals in the fields of cardiovascular disease prevention, behaviour change and maternal and child health. She has received grants from the National Institute for Health Research, Department of Health and local primary care Trusts.

Dr Sian Taylor-Phillips, Assistant Professor, University of Warwick

Dr Sian Taylor-Phillips is currently undertaking an NIHR postdoctoral fellowship leading a multi-centre randomised controlled trial of a software intervention designed to improve cancer detection performance in breast cancer screening. This work builds on research investigating fatigue and patterns of performance in breast cancer screening, which was part of a Wellcome Trust Value in People Fellowship. Prior to this, she undertook research about decision-making in the NHS, in particular, which services to fund.

Sian's research focus is health screening and testing. She applies a range of quantitative research methods primarily to questions about test performance and selection, quality assurance and improvement. She leads the Heath Screening masters module which is a collaboration with the UK National Screening Committee.

Dr Wendy Robertson

Wendy Robertson's research interests are in the areas of health promotion and health protection. Other areas of interest include the epidemiology of obesity in pregnancy and the methods for monitoring physical activity. In the area of health protection, she was involved with the investigation of a large outbreak of occupational respiratory disease (occupational asthma, extrinsic allergic alveolitis) at a factory which works with metal working fluid, and has maintained a research interest in this area.

Dr Lena Al-Khudairy

Dr Lena Al-Khudairy is Research fellow in Evidence Synthesis at Warwick Medical School, and works on CLAHRC WM Theme 3, Prevention and Detection of Disease. Lena is responsible for Theme 3 Patient and Public Involvement. Her research interests are broadly in the areas of lifestyle factors and chronic conditions. She is working on a series of Cochrane systematic reviews of lifestyle interventions for childhood obesity. Other areas of interest include diabetes and nutritional epidemiology. Lena graduated in Clinical Nutrition from the Faculty of Applied Medicine, King Saud University (2006). Following her bachelors she worked as a Clinical Diabetes Dietician then moved to the UK to continue her postgraduate studies. She has a Masters in Diabetes and a PhD both from the University of Warwick (2009-2014).

Dr Rebecca Johnson

Rebecca has worked at the University of Warwick since 2008, where she was a Research Assistant with the Royal College of Nursing Research Institute. She also worked as a Research Associate on the WAVES project, validating the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS) for use with young people aged 13 to 16. Rebecca has worked with Coventry Local Authority and Public Health since 2010, collaborating on a large scale programme of work to understand and improve public mental health in Coventry. This programme was the precursor to the Coventry Health Improvement Programme (CHIP) which was the largest cross-organisational health programme of its kind undertaken by the Coventry Partnership. Rebecca completed her PhD by conducting a mixed methods analysis of the practicalities of public health practice and evaluation in CHIP, focusing on mental wellbeing outcomes.

Hannah Fraser

Hannah recently joined the CLAHRC WM Prevention and Detection Diseases theme (3) as a Research Project Officer, starting in April 2015. Her role is to provide effective administration and research support for the team. Hannah’s background is in Psychology, and she completed her BSc in Psychology at the University of Warwick in 2010 with a 2.1. Since that time, she has been working in administrative roles at the University of Warwick, including working closely with a Technology Appraisal team, Warwick Evidence, who undertake systematic reviews for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Hannah has shown herself to be an incredibly dedicated committed member of staff with a real flair for both organisation and research. She took a short break in her career to take maternity leave and raise her lovely little boy Matthew, who is now 15 months old. Hannah is very keen to learn more about research and to undertake research training, and as part of her role will be working on systematic reviews. She will soon also be participating in various modules from the MSc in Research Methods at WMS. Her research interests are in visual marking and health screening.

Dr Nicki Adderley

Dr Nicola Adderley is a Research Fellow working in the CLAHRC WM Theme 3: Prevention and Detection of Diseases team at the University of Birmingham. She obtained a BA and MSci in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge, before completing an MA, MPhil and PhD (Personal Religion in the Libyan Period in Egypt) in Egyptology at the University of Birmingham. Her current projects include analysis of a large primary care dataset from the THIN database looking at prevalence and treatment of atrial fibrillation over the last 15 years, the external validation of a prediction model for adverse outcomes in inpatients with diabetes, and studying for the MPH (part time). She also tries to stay active in Egyptology and is currently a committee member of the Birmingham Egyptology group and Copy Editor for the Birmingham Egyptology Journal; her PhD thesis was recently published as a monograph.

Dr Oyinlola Oyebode

Oyinlola Oyebode, known as Lola (rhymes with scholar not cola), joined the University of Warwick in August 2014 after receiving her certificate of completion of training from the Faculty of Public Health training scheme. Lola trained in London, Kent, Surrey and Sussex; she began at NHS Hillingdon, where she was awarded £100K to carry out a randomised controlled trial of text-messaging to increase uptake of breast cancer screening across the borough. Lola then worked with Jenny Mindell in the Health and Social Surveys Research Group at University College London on the Health Survey for England, publishing the cardiovascular chapter of the annual report, as well as papers on the use of Health Survey for England data by policy-makers, and fruit and vegetable consumption and mortality (the latter garnering a lot of media interest). Lola spent nine months at NICE with the Interventional Procedures, Technology Appraisals and Public Health teams; had an exciting health protection attachment at Colindale; negotiated the changed public health landscape in the tri-borough Public Health team (serving Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, and Hammersmith and Fulham local authorities); and finally examined non-communicable disease risk-factors in low- and middle-income countries with Chris Millett at Imperial College London.

At Warwick, Lola has started projects looking at the use of traditional healers in low- and middle-income countries; the slow decline in total fertility rate in Sub-Saharan Africa; and salt-intake in urban informal settlements. Lola's current research areas include: public health research on non-communicable diseases and their risk-factors in low and middle-income countries and in the UK, and health in informal settlements or slums.

Dr Victor Adekanmbi

Victor Adekanmbi is a Research Fellow at Warwick Medical School, and works on CLAHRC WM Theme 3, Prevention and Detection of Disease. He is a Public Health Specialist with special interest and proficiency in health protection, clinical research and processes involved in ensuring reliable data collection and analysis. His research interest focuses on quantitative epidemiology with special interest in multilevel modelling to understand the effect of macro-level, meso-level and micro-level factors on population health. Other interests include maternal and child health research and understanding of the role of socioeconomic status in health outcomes and use of health care services. Victor graduated with Bachelors of Medicine and Surgery (MBChB) from the College of Health Sciences, Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria in 2005. Following his bachelors, he worked in a number of hospitals, then moved to the UK where he achieved Masters in Public Health (Epidemiology and Biostatistics) from the University of Birmingham in 2010 and subsequently worked in some International Non-Governmental Organisations. He also has a PhD in Health Sciences obtained from the University of Warwick in 2015.

Amy Grove

Amy has a background in Health Psychology and conducts research in the field of health services management, health technology assessment and evidence based medicine. Amy joined the Division of Health Sciences (DoHS) at Warwick Medical School in June 2011 as Research Project Manager for Warwick Evidence. She is a member of Populations, Evidence and Technologies. Amy holds a NIHR Fellowship to the value of £300,000. This highly competitive award enables her to complete a research project as part of a PhD whilst receiving significant training and development. Amy's project seeks to identify the barriers and facilitators to the implementation of NICE guidance into UK practice, in particular examining hip replacement surgery. Since beginning the Fellowship she has co-authored 14 peer reviewed journal articles across orthopedics, health technology assessment and evidence-based medicine. Amy is a co-investigator on a £4.5M NIHR award to deliver technology appraisal reviews. This work provides NICE with essential clinical and cost-effectiveness information to make decisions for current practice across the NHS. The outputs are papers delivered to NICE which inform the development of clinical guidance for the treatment of NHS patients. This work directly impacts NHS services and influencs knowledge in the academic field via journal publication. Amy has strong methodological skills including systematic reviewing, epidemiology, medical statistics and qualitative methods. Additionally, she is a certified project manager having worked across industry and academia. Her career aim is to become an internationally recognised health services researcher specialising in the interdisciplinary connection between evidence-based practice and improvement science in health care. Amy is an avid Ultra marathon runner, with a passion for the outdoors.

Dr Ruth Pritchett

Dr Ruth Pritchett is a research fellow within CLAHRC theme three and is based at the University of Birmingham. Ruth studied for her undergraduate BMedSi in psychological medicine and her PhD in the effectiveness of exercise in the treatment of postnatal depression at the University of Birmingham. Ruth has conducted research in a variety of areas of behavioural medicine including postnatal depression, postpartum psychosis, childhood and adult obesity. Ruth has a particular interest in child and maternal health and spent a year working for the charity Action on Postpartum Psychosis within the Department of Psychiatry. Her current research projects include the evaluation of a healthy lifestyle intervention in nurseries, a cohort study on preventable maternal readmissions to hospital and a systematic review of exercise as a treatment for postnatal depression.

Dr Danai Bem

Danai Bem joined the CLAHRC WM Theme 3 team in December 2015. She is a systematic reviewer, based at the University of Birmingham, undertaking and supporting systematic reviews for all the different themes of the programme. She has experience with conducting both quantitative and qualitative systematic reviews. Her main research interests are in the areas of cardiovascular disease prevention and rare diseases. Danai obtained a BSc (Honours) in Molecular Biology from the University of Dundee and then completed a PhD in Cancer Sciences at the University of Birmingham. Prior to her role as a systematic reviewer she has worked as a research fellow gaining valuable knowledge and experience in mild bleeding disorders (former member of the Genotyping & Phenotyping of Platelets, GAPP, group), rare diseases and genetics. Danai is also a member of the University of Birmingham STEM Ethical Review Committee.

Theme 3 links

Theme lead

Professor Aileen Clarke, University of Warwick

Partners

Birmingham City Council
Coventry City Council
Warwickshire County Council
University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust
Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust
University of Warwick
University of Birmingham