Speakers Biographies

Please note that speakers are listed in order of appearance in the conference programme

Dr Tara Dean

Director, Portsmouth, SE Hants and IOW RDSU; Director of Research, School of Health Sciences and Social Work, University of Portsmouth

Tara has been an active academic researcher for the past 20 years. Although her personal area of research focuses on the allergic and respiratory conditions, she is also a keen health service researcher and collaborates on number of research projects spanning many health discipline areas. She has published widely in leading medical and scientific journals and over the years has raised over £3,500,000 for her research. She continues her research in the area of asthma and allergy and is the Honorary Deputy Director at the Asthma and Allergy Research Centre on the Isle of Wight whose activity in this area is internationally recognised. Currently she is a Reader in Epidemiology and the Director of Research for the School of Health Sciences and Social Work (University of Portsmouth). She is the Director of the Portsmouth, South East Hampshire and Isle of Wight Research and Development Support Unit and has been involved with the RDSU since 1996.

Professor Celia Davies

Director of the Research for Patient Benefit Programme, NIHR Central Commissioning Facility

Celia Davies is a sociologist whose research has focussed on health policy, gender and the health professions. She began her career in industrial sociology at Imperial College and subsequently took on a series of research posts at the University of Warwick. In the mid 1980s, she held the foundation Chair in Women’s Studies at the University of Ulster, where she set up a Centre for Research on Women, before moving to The Open University as Professor of Health Care, a post she held for almost 10 years. She has attracted research grants from a variety of sources, including the ESRC and the Methodology and Service Delivery and Organisation Programmes now part of the National Institute of Health Research. Her most recent book ‘Citizens at the Centre’ is a collaborative work evaluating the Citizens Council of NICE. She has been in post as Director of the Research for Patient Programme since April 2006 and currently also holds a visiting professorship at LSE.

Dr Quentin Sandifer

Deputy Regional Director of Public Health, South East Coast SHA

Quentin is a graduate of the University of Wales College of Medicine, Columbia University, New York and London Business School. He trained initially in general practice and between 1990 and 1992 worked as a family physician in a rural community in Canada before returning to the UK to train in public health. In 1996 he held a travelling fellowship from the Royal Society of Medicine and studied managed care developments in the USA. In 1997 he was appointed as a consultant in public health medicine in Swansea and then as Director of Public Health in 2000, remaining in that role until 2004 when he joined Kent and Medway Strategic Health Authority as its Director of Health Improvement and Medical Director. Between November 2005 and July 2006 Quentin served in a full time joint appointment between Kent County Council and Kent and Medway Strategic Health Authority as Executive Director of Public Health. Following NHS reorganisation in 2006 he has been Deputy Regional Director of Public Health and Medical Director at South East Coast Strategic Health Authority. He is also an Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer at the University of Kent. External appointments include Honorary Secretary of the Royal Society of Medicine.

John Sitzia

Lead, for South East Coast, UK Clinical Research Network

John is the R&D Director at Worthing and Southlands Hospitals, a large acute hospital in West Sussex and also lead a research Consortium of ten NHS organisations, including PCTs, mental health/social care trusts, acute trusts, and an ambulance trust. He is currently on secondment to the UKCRN Co-ordinating Centre, working on the national development and roll-out of the new NIHR Comprehensive Research Network.

He was a NHS researcher for many years before entering research management, and so have some understanding of the perspectives and needs of the ‘users’ of research management and governance services. He has published 40 peer-reviewed papers and continues to be research-active (on a very part-time basis!). Originally his research was in the field of supportive care, looking particularly at cancer patients’ experiences of chemotherapy treatment, and at quality of life and treatment outcomes for people with lymphoedema. This work in cancer care gradually evolved into an interest in patient involvement issues, initially focusing on ‘involvement’ in service planning and delivery and more recently on public involvement in health research specifically.

Dr Sara Mallinson

Associate Director, Health R&D NoW

Dr Sara Mallinson has been involved in health related research since her undergraduate days as a student of social psychology at Bradford University. She has worked at Edinburgh, Salford and Leeds Universities before joining the Institute for Health Research at Lancaster University as a Senior Research Fellow in 2002 and being appointed as Lecturer in Social Science in 2006. She joined HRDNoW as an Associate Director in September 2006.

Her research to date has included: subjective assessment of health status and outcomes; experiences of health and illness and help seeking strategies; perceptions of public health work in local health systems, and the relationship between place, history and health inequalities. Sara has a particular interest in the interface between qualitative and quantitative methods in health and social research and in exploring innovative ways of collecting and synthesising evidence to inform public health policy.

David Crook PhD

Principal Advisor, SE RDSU (Sussex)

David Crook is a Senior Research Fellow in the Division of Primary Care and Public Health, Brighton and Sussex Medical School as well as Senior Research Adviser to the Sussex RDSU. He has a research background in sex hormones and cardiovascular disease, resulting in 60 peer-review publications and over 100 other publications. Current interests include evangelising for a wider appreciation of how statistics can help (rather than hinder) researchers and also attempting to divine precisely which buttons to push for a successful Research for Patient Benefit application.

Gillian Vass

Manager, Kent & Medway NHS Health & Europe Centre

Gillian is a professional manager with 11 years experience in the NHS working in a variety of capacities in an acute NHS Trust. Before joining the NHS, Gillian lived in Canada for 21 years where she worked in management capacities in the fields of marketing, advertising, recruitment, public relations and as an independent businesswoman and entrepreneur. Gillian joined the European Institute of Social Services at the University of Kent as the Health and Europe Development Manager in 2002. The Health and Europe Centre is a resource service working in partnership with and funded by the Primary Care Trusts in Kent and Medway; The Southeast Coast Strategic Health Authority and supported by the Public Health Directorate of Kent County Council. The Centre delivers a range of services to its stakeholders from providing evidence of good practice, increasing knowledge and skills to support continuing professional development and modernization agendas, shared learning events, bidding for European funded programmes, dissemination of relevant EU health and social care information and responding to policy papers from the EU.

Gillian has developed considerable expertise in the European Health arena and has initiated several EU funded projects. Recent experience includes hands-on project managing and delivering cross border projects in the fields of nutrition/physical activity and teenage pregnancy.

The Health and Europe Centre is currently establishing a Social Enterprise Company and in the summer of 2007 will be transferring to the new Company and relocating to a base in an NHS organisation.

Dr Helen Elsey

Deputy Director, Southampton and N&W Hampshire RDSU

Helen Elsey is currently a Senior Research Fellow and Deputy Director with the RDSU for Southampton & North & West Hampshire. She joined the RDSU in January 2006 after completing her PhD at Southampton University. As part of the RDSU team, Helen provides advice and training on study design, particularly qualitative research. Her own research interests are in equity and user involvement in health and social care. These interests stem from over 10 years experience in community development and public health work in developing countries, particularly focusing on prevention and social impacts of HIV/AIDS.

Dr Colin Pritchard

Co-ordinator, Peninsula RDSU (Cornwall)

Colin graduated in English from Liverpool University in 1972. After a time working in industry and his own business he went on to take his MA in Systems at Lancaster University in 1978, and was awarded his PhD there in 1980. After completing his doctorate, Colin worked for the MRC Medical Sociology Unit in Aberdeen on a range of national and international projects in maternal and child health. He moved with the Unit to Glasgow where he was part of the team designing the 2007 cohort study. Subsequently, Colin worked at two Scottish Office Research Units - the Social Paediatric and Obstetric Research Unit and its successor, the Public Health Research Unit. He was principal investigator on a variety of research projects studying aspects of social inequality in health and on early applications of behavioural medicine. He was responsible for the development of major programmes of work on relationships between health service activity and the public health and on methodological issues in health and health services research. Since 1995 Colin has been co-ordinator of the RDSU in Cornwall. He completed his MSc in Health Economics at City University in 2002.

Dr Sara Morris

Manager for User Involvement in Research, R&D NoW

Originally an English graduate, Sara is also a trained nurse and has been involved in health research for the past fifteen years. Sara's doctoral thesis explored the support needs of women with breast cancer and she was subsequently involved in two multidisciplinary research projects, which focused on the perspectives and social needs of cancer patients and their main carers.

In 2002 Sara moved on to become the R&D Manager with special remit for user involvement at Health R&D North West (www.hrdn.org). Sara is keen to support the active involvement of members of the public in health research and she does this in a variety of ways, such as providing

individual and group support and advice, or through delivering workshops and presentations. Sara's role also includes facilitating the continuing work of the North West Users Research Advisory Group."

Professor Valerie Hall

Head, SE RDSU (Sussex)

Professor Valerie Hall is the head of the Centre for Nursing and Midwifery Research at the University of Brighton where she also leads the Sussex arm of the SE NHS RDSU (www.serdsu.org). She is a practicing midwife, educationalist and researcher and has over twenty years experience of working with voluntary organisations and user groups.

Over the last seven years her experience has ranged from working with user representatives on a national research study, which looked at the educational preparation required for midwives to work effectively with disadvantaged women; to leading a small scale local study which involved people who use services as members of the steering group and also to validate the interpretation of data and findings. She is currently working on a proposal to undertake participatory research which employs peer researchers to look at the role of community based services in supporting women with low mood or depression following childbirth.

Natalie Lambert

Research Advisor, SE RDSU (Sussex)

Natalie has 10 years of academic health research experience, including sexual health, complementary medicine and development work. Natalie's particular interest lies in research methodologies and adaptations. A qualitative and quantitative researcher, her knowledge of participatory research methods has developed into a broader interest and responsibility for public involvement in research within her current RDSU role. Most recently she has co-ordinated specialist PI research training, and led the development of a database and liaison model to put researchers and public in touch with each other.