While completing public health specialty training, Dr Hall was awarded a highly competitive Wellcome Trust Research Training Fellowship. During this Fellowship, Dr Hall completed a PhD in Malawi, investigating the relationships between pregnancy intention and maternal and neonatal outcomes.

This research validated the London Measure of Unplanned Pregnancy in the Chichewa language, and made it freely available for use. Dr Hall then established a new, community-based cohort of over 4000 pregnant women, working with the MaiMwana Project in Mchinji District. This cohort has been used to describe the prevalence and determinants of unplanned pregnancy in this setting, and to investigate the relationships between pregnancy intention and outcomes such as postnatal depression, birthweight, stillbirth and neonatal death. Simultaneously Dr Hall conducted qualitative work to explore issues around access to and uptake of postpartum contraception; a key strategy in preventing unplanned pregnancy.

Dr Hall has now been awarded a prestigious NIHR Post-Doctoral Fellowship, starting in January 2018. During this work she will be collaborating with clinical colleagues at UCLH on piloting the LMUP in antenatal care with a view to developing a national surveillance system for unplanned pregnancies, moving away from reliance on adhoc surveys or proxy measures such as abortions. She will also be evaluating new ways of assessing the future pregnancy intentions of non-pregnant women to inform discussions around either contraceptive use, to prevent unplanned pregnancies, or preconception advice for those thinking of trying for pregnancy.