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, a NIHR SPCR six month fellowship and a NIHR SPCR-funded study of depression and anxiety in frail older people. She has carried out public engagement work with frail older people in day centres, funded by UCL Culture, and was awarded a place on a collaborative early career ageing workshop in Sao Paolo in June 2018.  

Rachael is currently a Research Associate on PriDem, an Alzheimer’s Society-funded project to develop and evaluate primary care-led models of good post-diagnostic care for people with dementia and their carers. She is also a collaborator on an ESRC-funded project relating to experiences of depression in people with long term conditions, a member of the British Society of Gerontology and the Society for Academic Primary Care and an Associate Editor for the Journal of Herbal Medicine.