Dr Rachael Frost graduated with First Class Honours in BSc Herbal Medicine from the University of Central Lancashire. During this time she also undertook a paid summer internship in mental health research, which led to a poster prize, a presentation to an international research group and attending an undergraduate conference at Ithaca University in the USA. She has a MSc in Health Sciences from the University of York. Her subsequent PhD studentship at Glasgow Caledonian University explored methods of measuring adherence to home-based rehabilitation interventions and ways that the use of adherence diaries could be optimised, which led to an interest in ageing research. During this time she also worked as a systematic reviewer and interviewer on a number of other research projects. 

Rachael has been based at UCL since 2015 in the Centre for Ageing and Population Studies, working on ageing research projects including a NIHR HTA-funded pilot and feasibility trial of frailty prevention. She has been awarded a NIHR SPCR six month fellowship and NIHR SPCR funding to carry out reviews and qualitative work into depression and anxiety in frail older people. She worked on the PriDem research project to develop and evaluate effective primary care led models of post-diagnostic dementia care, led by Newcastle University. She has undertaken public engagement work with frail older people in day centres, funded by UCL Culture, and is currently the co-lead for Patient and Public Engagement and Involvement in the Department of Primary Care and Population Health. 

She was awarded a place on a collaborative early career ageing workshop in Sao Paolo in June 2018, and is now part of the Frailty in Brazil and UK: Learning Across Borders (FIBULA) network carrying out frailty-related research across both countries. She was awarded a UCL Global Engagement Funds bursary to further develop this. 

Rachael is currently a Senior Research Fellow within the Centre for Ageing Population Studies. She is Treasurer-Elect for the British Society of Gerontology and an Associate Editor for Geriatrics, Gerontology & Ageing and the Journal of Herbal Medicine.