Speakers & Presenters

Paul (from TSIP) recently joined the Centric Team focusing on medical scepticism in communities, though had been part of TSIP’s initial Community Researcher cohort. Paul brings a unique blend of theory and practice to TSIP, combining frontline work expertise in highly volatile environments with research and analytical aptitude.

Paul worked for six years as a community mentor and consultant for prisoners in a number of prisons on a bespoke mentoring project based in Brixton from 2005 to 2011. Paul was the main contributor to a 600-page manual detailing the approach of the programme. Paul then worked as a researcher with several academics on different assignments over the years, including exploring effective community-based initiatives to challenge extremist narratives in Europe. From November 2015 to March 2021 Paul worked as a Senior Support Worker for RBKC Complex Needs Service, a Look Ahead Care Support and Housing service in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

Paul is a graduate from the School of Oriental and African Studies, wherein 2000 he completed a BA (Hons) in History, graduating with an Upper 2:1. In 2001 he then completed an MA in African Studies also at SOAS. In 2002 Paul then gained a Cambridge CELTA. Paul also began a PhD at SOAS in 2013, but in 2014 withdrew from the doctoral programme to focus on being a father.

Rachel Allen is Professor of Practice in Research Capacity Building at St George’s, University of London, with an academic background that includes strategic leadership of undergraduate education, postgraduate education and research training.  She leads the Capacity building theme of the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration South London, which delivers training and development for researchers and non-researchers to develop research capacity and capability.

I am currently approaching the end of my PhD studies within the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London, where I have worked on a research programme funded by The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute (THIS Institute). My PhD research is concerned with patient safety and quality in mental healthcare. I’ve chosen to focus my research on community mental health services specifically, as these services have been widely overlooked in emerging research and national mental health patient safety improvement initiatives, which have centered on inpatient care. Whilst carrying out my research, I’ve enjoyed working with service users, carers, and staff to find out about their experiences in relation to community mental health services. Before starting my PhD, I worked in a range of different research and clinical settings. These included adult mental health and addiction services, as well as roles in a research capacity within a children’s mental health charity and an applied social policy research organisation.

Stuart Black has over 35 years business experience leading innovation and change in multiple industries, in interim, permanent, voluntary roles, public and private sector.

His first degree is in Electronic Engineering from Kings College London, his second degree is an MSc in Coaching and Development, based on the transpersonal psychology Psychosynthesis.

In 2013 he founded Applied Neuroscience Solutions Ltd, who trade as BrainTrainUK providing private therapeutic services for mental health and neurological issues, specialising in the remediation of developmental trauma.

He and his partner are kinship carers to 3 children of a friend who died suddenly in 2017. They became the children’s Special Guardians after 17 months and  11 Court hearings, 8 in the High Court.

Stuart is a Trustee of the Family Rights Group, a national charity supporting kinship carers and parents involved in Children’s Social Care. He is a member of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (CAFCASS) Family Forum, was Chair of North West Surrey Foster Care Association for 4 years. He is founding Trustee of the Family Support Group, supporting foster and kinship families in Surrey, Hants and Berks.

Launched book “Neurofeedback for Trauma” at Trauma Conference in Belfast June 2022.

Part Maasai part Ashkenazi Jew, Jamaican born, London bred. Early life was ‘interesting,’ our home shared with many random tenants with many problems, lively, chaotic desperate. All helped pay the mortgage. Both parents often working opposite shifts or dad galavanting. Exploring the country and making connections was his thing loading us three in the car for the ride.

Rebel teenager I escaped Balham asap finding Social Work with L B Haringey in a tiny Hertford hamlet. Loved its opportunities for country walks with under sevens and farm animals – pigs are Big! Marriage, children, social work sometimes meant I was repeating my parents shift pattern. Life chucks challenges so things changed, I raised my teenage sons into adulthood as a single parent then moved to Lincolnshire for Years!. 

I’ve burned with righteous indignation at the many negative situations directed at the ‘us ‘ who are ‘other’ denied work or recognition, yet when reluctantly nudged into a Lambeth community group meeting I was surprised to be hooked. I Love – by us for us.  

The work with Centric Community Organisation has gifted many others, who like me, research, investigate, learn and share, a place of beneficial challenge and growth. For those we interview, listen to, share time, hear darkness and hope, validate; perhaps personal developments and a way forward to greater paths.

I came into research as a Trainee community researcher and I was unskilled to conduct research and become a Project Manager. I am an ambitious, passionate disabled parent. I am an advocate for those who are unheard, especially those who are disabled and from ethnic minorities. I believe that equality isn’t quite what those with disabilities need but equity, a shoe that fits the individual rather than a pair of shoes for everyone .

Sarah Crabtree joined the Cicely Saunders Institute in November 2022 as the Public Involvement Coordinator and Research Assistant. Palliative Care is close to her heart through personal experience as well as professional placements and volunteering in palliative care settings. She is trained as a music therapist and through this work and her research has experience working with people living with dementia. She has recently completed her PhD VIVA exploring how different musical activities are used to improve cognition and reduce behavioural and psychological symptoms for people living with dementia.

Jen is a Research Programme Officer in Public Health at Lambeth Council. Having supported Lambeth Council’s successful bid for NIHR’s new Health Determinant Research Collaboration (HDRC) funding stream, she is supporting the delivery of Lambeth HDRC – called Lambeth HEART (Health Determinants Research and Evaluation Network). Jen is also a registered Nurse, has an MSc in Global Health and is interested in population health, health systems and policy.

Kaat is a Research Associate in Maternal and Perinatal Mental Health in the Department of Women and Children’s Health at the School of Life Sciences and Medicine, King’s College London. She was awarded an NIHR Doctoral Research Fellowship in October 2022 to carry out a doctoral research study, focusing on maternity care for women facing removal at birth due to safeguarding issues. Using a mixed methods approach, her study is aiming to understand the maternity care experiences of mothers whose baby is removed shortly after birth through social care proceedings, and their maternal, neonatal and mental health outcomes. Her previous clinical roles as a specialist perinatal mental health midwife at the Rosie Hospital (Cambridge) and matron at the Kingfisher Mother and Baby Unit (Norwich) have strongly influenced her research interests. She joined the Department of Women and Children’s Health in 2020, through an NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Fellowship for clinicians. Since then, she has contributed to several studies on perinatal mental health and on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on maternity services.

Cristina is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Women and Children’s Health (Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine, King’s College London) with more than 15 years of clinical and research experience in a wide range of international settings. She has experience in clinical research of tropical and infectious diseases, complex interventions in maternal health, clinical trials and mixed methods implementation research.

Dr Nadine Fontaine-Palmer is the Director at Mabadiliko with a PhD in Neuroscience (University of Bristol, 2008) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Behaviour Change (UCL, 2019), Nadine is an experienced behavioural change, research and communications expert, specialising in the application of behavioural science and human-centred insights to organisational transformation. Before joining Mabadiliko CIC, Nadine developed a career with almost 10 years in the consulting arena, primarily within global Big 4 consulting houses as an independent consultant. Nadine now leads Mabadiliko’s evidence-based practice and insights gathering work with respect to organisational equity and inclusion, primarily through the Cultural Humility programme. Nadine also leads Mabadiliko’s extensive portfolio of public health research studies, largely funded by NHS organisations with a specific focus of the experience of minoritised communities within the health care system. Her work in this space includes recent studies with respect to Hypertension, Diabetes, Heart Valve Disease, Health Technology and Health Checks.

Husseina Hamza is the Director of Red Ribbon Living Well CIC, which is a community-led voluntary organisation supporting individuals affected by and living with HIV, mental health and violence abuse. The group was founded in 2009 by members who recognised the need for peer support in the community, and it has grown from its grass-roots beginnings.

Our aim is to nurture the feeling of well-being among members via social activities, workshop and training that includes empowerment, advocate, networking and peer emotional support. Red Ribbon Living Well seeks to identify appropriate pathways to enable individuals to move out of isolation and loneliness which would enhance their social mental well-being to a better quality of life

We work with people in an empathic, non-judgmental and non-discriminatory manner, with no restrictions around race, religion, gender or sexual orientation

Savi joined King’s College London in 2016 as the Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) Coordinator for the Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRC) South London, which in October 2019 became an Applied Research Collaboration (ARC). This involves working with researchers, service users, carers and communities across a range of themes to enable research to better reflect the views, concerns and priorities of local people. Activities include taking forward the ARC’s involvement strategy and supporting a network of researchers acting as involvement champions, strengthening partnership, helping to organise events such as an annual Active Involvement in Research Day and producing an involvement newsletter.

She has worked for many years in patient and public involvement in health and social care planning, delivery and research at local and national level, including knowledge mobilisation, policy work and community engagement, and before that as an outreach and development worker. She graduated in Chemical Engineering at University College London.

Dr Siân Howell is a GP in southeast London, Clinical Lead for Clinical Effectiveness Southeast London and led the One London STOP BP London project.

Zahra is currently undertaking a PhD in the Department of Women and Children’s Health with the NIHR ARC South London Maternal and Perinatal Mental Health Theme. Her project aims to apply an intersectional approach to tackle health inequalities while exploring community-based models of midwifery care in an area of high ethnic diversity and social deprivation. She is supervised by Prof Jane Sandall, Prof Seeromanie Harding, Dr Cristina Fernandes-Turienzo and Dr Hannah Rayment-Jones.

Zahra Khan joined KCL in 2016 with the Midwifery Department as an educator and her roles included Clinical Teacher, Lecturer, Cohort Lead and UG Programme Lead. She has been actively involved in various EDI initiatives projects in the faculty and wider college. She strives to incorporate inclusive educational and research practices in her work.

Lily works with Saskia, and are Service User Research Ambassadors at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. Their role involves using lived experience to promote the importance research to service users. They work in collaboration with clinical and research teams to build a culture of trust and increase accessibility of clinical research to service users.

Sophie is the Implementation and Involvement Manager and works across the HIN Insights team and the ARC South London Implementation & Involvement team.

In her role, Sophie supports the involvement of people with lived experience across a number of projects, as well as working to embed involvement at a strategic level. She also has experience leading service evaluations across south London.

Prior to joining the HIN, Sophie worked in acute and community settings in both service management and project management, with a focus on long term conditions and community nursing. She has a BSc in Medical Science from the University of Exeter and an MSc in Implementation and Improvement Science from King’s College London

I am a practising Adult Nurse, who has also worked in various NHS operational and strategic management roles as an alumni of the NHS Graduate Management Training Scheme. I am a current Darzi Fellow at King’s College Hospital and London South Bank University. My Darzi fellowship work relates to improving Healthcare Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. This is a field I am both personally and professionally passionate about, and I am incredibly excited to facilitate meaningful action through evidenced based interventions that improve outcomes for communities in partnership with professionals. I am currently leading on the delivery of a trust-wide Health Inequalities Programme across KCH.

Vita Moltedo is co-founder of Maternity Voices Matter and she took part in a pilot project on maternity care funded by the Co-Production Collective. At ARC South London Vita is an active member and contributor of the Maternity and Perinatal Mental Health research theme and the Public and Patient Involvement and Engagement network.  

She is also one of the founder members and a public contributor Public Research Panel for the ARC. She is a public member of the Involvement Advisory Group and is on the organisational committee for the Inside Research Symposium.  

Vita is currently collaborating with researchers as a public and patient involvement contributor on various projects funded by the NIHR. 

Mary Newburn works with the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) South London maternity and perinatal mental health theme, Kings College London. Their research addresses poorer health outcomes for women and babies living in areas of social disadvantage and from Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups. She is a member of NHS England’s Maternity Transformation Programme Stakeholder Council, and the Midwifery Continuity of Carer Research and Evaluation Sub-group.

She collaborated on the National Sentinel Caesarean Audit, Birthplace in England, the INFANT randomised controlled trial, and Birth Timing, a data-linkage study, and is now working with RESILIENT, RELAX and RIVA research teams.

Dr Caroline Norrie is a Research Fellow based in the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Workforce at King’s College London. Research interests include care homes, gambling-related harms, adult safeguarding and the nursing and social care workforce. She is currently leading a project exploring recruitment into occupational health careers. Caroline is newly appointed as Deputy Theme Lead, Social Care, NIHR ARC South London. Caroline is also NIHR London, Research Design Service (RDS) Social Care Lead

Cheryl is a multidisciplinary Creative from South London with experience in Motion Design, Advertising, Film, Events and Broadcast Theatre. She has worked at Sky’s Creative Agency, Mixcloud, MakeShift, Protein Studios and Bush Theatre. She has also trained with Google as part of their Creative Campus advertising Scheme, at Cannes Lions Festival. As an advocate for community building, Cheryl has joined Centric as a Community Researcher, to help Southwark residents share their perspectives on the council’s plans for future development.

Sarah lives with ongoing mental health challenges. She was a National Mind trustee for nine years and during that time she co-foundered and co-led the successful PROMISE restraint reduction project at the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust. Sarah also initiated the MINDS Study (Coproducing improved mental health acute inpatient discharge using a Systems approach) and is now Co-Chief Investigator on this three-year project funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research. Sarah has always been a proponent Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) and is the PPI co-lead for the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Mental Health Implementation Network and PPI Advisor to the pan-London Safety in Mental Health Setting project. She is a member of the Q community, led by the Health Foundation.

Beverley Randall is a CIPD Associate Programme Director who helps to supports people with mental ill health reach their full potential both in employment and education works at mosaic clubhouse

In 2017 Amy completed a PhD in Psychobiology and Epidemiology at University College London. In 2019, she joined the Department of Psychological Medicine at the IoPPN at King’s College London to work on a project trying to understand the factors associated with physical and mental multimorbidity. Amy now works at the Health Services and Population Research Department, IoPPN as a Research Associate in Statistics and Epidemiology where she is interested in evaluating complex mental health interventions, as well as understanding the impact of air pollution on health outcomes.

Dr Kritika Samsi is Senior Research Fellow at the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Workforce. She has worked in dementia care research for over 10 years using qualitative methodology to investigate a wide range of topics: (1) if there is an optimal time for people with dementia to move into a care home; (2) service needs of older homeless people with cognitive impairment; (3) views of home care staff providing end of life care to people with dementia at home; (4) implementation of the Mental Capacity Act and its relevance for people with dementia; (5) transitions in identity from experiencing ‘memory problems’ to ‘having dementia’, (6) respite services for carers of people living with dementia, among others.

She has also conducted studies related to the social care workforce, including conducting an early process evaluation of the implementation of the social care Workforce Race Equality Standards, investigating the views and contributions of ancillary staff in care homes, the role of social care Personal Assistants in supporting people living at home, and the home care workforce.

Carla Stanke is a qualified public health professional with over 15 years of diverse health improvement and health protection experience spanning three continents. Trained in Public Health by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and driven by her commitment to meaningfully address health inequities, Carla is passionate about maternal and child health and credits her roots as a reproductive health activist as the inspiration for her career in public health.

As the Public Health Specialist for the Lambeth Early Action Partnership (LEAP), Carla’s goals are to deliver a high-quality, evidence-based programme that enables LEAP children to have the very best start in life and to maximise every opportunity to share learning so that stronger support systems around families can be developed.

Chifundo is the CRN Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Lead and Chair of the CRN South London Inclusivity Panel. She is passionate about promoting public & patient involvement and diversity in research. Chifundo is a registered nurse at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and works as a Haemoglobinopathy  Practice Development Nurse with a focus on Nurse Lead research.

Jane Tilton is the Fostering and Supported Lodgings manager for Southwark council.  Previous to this she was the Adoption Recruitment manager.  For the last 21 years she was the manager and co-ordinator of the London Partners in Permanency Consortium (previously South London Fostering and Special Guardian Consortium).

She is also the manager of Bellenden Therapies and is a qualified aromatherapist, reflexologist and kinesiologist.

Beka Torlay joined the CSI in August 2022 as a research administrator for the programme EMBED-Care – ‘Empowering better end of life dementia care’ and supporting PPI at the CSI. Beka has already had the privilege of meeting and corresponding with many of our PPI members for different events and projects and has appreciated the lived experience and insight that they bring to the table. Beka’s previous experience with public outreach involved educating people about wildlife and conservation.

Professor Tushna Vandrevala is a Health Psychologist at Kingston University and Capacity Building Deputy Theme Lead for the NIHR ARC South London.

Her research areas are in two overarching fields:

(1) Health Inequalities in hard-to-reach group (ethnically diverse groups, migrant groups, undocumented migrants) and those at lifespan transitions (such as pregnant women): Her work considers how health communication and health promotion can be tailored to understand and mitigate risk and reduce health inequalities, particularly in the area of infectious and communicable diseases. Her work has informed how risk should be communicated to diverse groups, to enhance self-efficacy, and motivate individuals to practice health protecting behaviours. Her work also addressed how to mitigate group influences of stigma, alienation and mistrust at group and systems level.

(2) Professional quality of life, well-being and quality of care in adult health and social care: She is interested in how staff working in health and social care settings (care home and domiciliary care) deal with challenging and distressing issues such as end of life, dealing with challenging behaviours, and how occupational identity impacts job commitment and job satisfaction. She is keen to take this work forward by considering the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of the diverse workforce migrant, high risk occupational groups.

Zoë Vowles is a Midwife Research Assistant with the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration South London Maternity and Perinatal Mental Health Theme. Zoe is also a Clinical Research Midwife and NIHR Pre-doctoral Clinical Academic Fellow at Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust/King’s College London. Zoë has a role as a co-investigator as part of the MuM-PreDiCT collaboration, which is undertaking research to improve care for pregnant women with two or more health conditions. Zoë’s research interests are the role of the midwife in the care of women with multiple long-term conditions and which models of care improve pregnancy, birth and postnatal outcomes and experience of maternity care for these women.

Dr Xi Ye is responsible for the management of SBRI Healthcare competitions and led on the setup of the SBRI Phase 3 and NHS Cancer Programme Innovation Open Calls, funding programmes focusing on implementation of mature innovations and real-world evaluation. He is particularly interested in equity of access and improving adoption of innovations within the healthcare system.