Email: portico-services@ucl.ac.uk
Help Desk: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ras/portico/helpdesk
- Professor of Child Health Research
- Population, Policy & Practice Dept
- UCL GOS Institute of Child Health
- Faculty of Pop Health Sciences
I am a medical sociologist, and was educated/trained at the Universities of Reading, Aix-Marseille and Sussex with further training at the Social Statistics Research Unit at City University under the leadership of John Fox.
I spent a decade in the third sector leading R&D with the children’s charity Barnardo’s; have spend time seconded to a government department to work on a green paper on the family and spent almost 10 years on the board of NICE. Since October 2019, I have been an elected member of UCL council.
I'm an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health, a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education and held an honorary fellowship at All Souls College Oxford.
Internationally, I have served on the Health Advisory Council, and then the Science Advisory Council with the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research in Canada and the International Advisory Panel for the Li Ka Shing Institute at St Michael's Hospital, Toronto,
I have served on a number of funding committees for NIHR and other funders, and am an editor with NIHR Journals Library.


I have research interests in the translation of research evidence into policy and practice across health, education and social care; inequalities in health (and what can be done about them) and the voice of the patient, service user and citizen. I write on the lay expertise of users of services (including child users); the synthesis of different kinds of research evidence, and implementation issues. My work has recently been with young people leaving the care system, in particular young people arriving as unaccompanied children, and young people with a learning disability. Current research includes working with the longitudinal qualitative team at Born in Bradford and joining my colleague Lee Hudson's team looking at mental health admissions to paediatric wards (MAPS).
A current preoccupation on the research/engagement borders is working with clinical, early career and sustainability colleagues as well as local residents on how they might prioritise action relating to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children' Clean Air Hospitals Framework and working with Bartlett ICH and Laws colleague on clean air issues more generally @UCL_CleanAir
The majority of my teaching and learning activities involve working with our doctoral students and postdocs, and helping them prepare grant funding applications. I have taught on the public health undergraduate course and the masters in women's health and currently contribute to teaching on the Community Health masters.
1975 | Doctor of Philosophy | University of Sussex | |
1972 | Maitrise | Universite Aix-Marseille III | |
1971 | Bachelor of Arts | University of Reading |