Mangenda is a Gender specialist and an educator; her research area for her M.Phil in Gender Studies was on the school going experiences of pregnant and mothering teenagers. She co-founded 2YoungLives, a community-based mentoring scheme for pregnant adolescents, in 2017 and became the Research Assistant for this project as part of CRIBS, a NIHR-funded global health group in 2021. She is currently studying for her PhD at the University of Sierra Leone where she will be focussing on using photovoice methodology to better understand the lived experiences of this group of young women in Sierra Leone.
Gregory Aarons, PhD is Professor of Psychiatry at UC San Diego, Co-Director of the UCSD Dissemination and Implementation Science Center (UCSD-DISC), and Director of the Child and Adolescent Services Research Center (CASRC). Dr Aarons is a clinical and organisational psychologist who focuses on improving behavioral health care in service systems in the US and internationally. He is co-developer of the Exploration, Preparation, Implementation, Sustainment (EPIS) framework (https://episframework.com). His research, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institute of Mental Health, Centers for Disease Control, and the W.T. Grant Foundation focuses on identifying and improving system, organisational, and individual factors that support implementation and sustainment of evidence-based practices and quality of care in health and allied health care settings. Much of Dr Aarons’ work focuses on aligning and testing leadership and organisation support strategies and training managers to become effective leaders to support evidence-based practice implementation and sustainment in behavioral health (https://implementationleadership.com). His implementation and scale-up strategies are being used and tested in behavioral health, schools, child welfare, HIV prevention, and trauma treatment in the US, Norway, and West Africa. His most recent work is in developing and fostering community-academic partnerships to increase the use of research evidence in policy and practice. Dr Aarons has been a featured speaker on implementation science in the US, Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, and Africa. He also provides training and mentoring in implementation science and practice for the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the NIH Fogarty International Center and Kings College London.
Ioannis Bakolis is a Reader (Associate Professor) in biostatistics and epidemiology. Ioannis research integrates statistics, epidemiology, biology, geography, and computer-science to explore social and environmental risk and protective factors for population physical and mental health over the life course. Ioannis is also a leading expert on evaluation, implementation, and scale up population-health interventions and clinical trials in healthcare and community settings worldwide with the use of quasi-experimental and novel hybrid designs. Ioannis is a deputy lead for the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) South London Economics and Biostatistics theme, methodology lead for the Centre for Implementation Science. Before joining King’s College, Ioannis has previously held research positions at Imperial College London (2013-2015) and (2008-2012) and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (2012-2013).
Dr Sarah Birken is an Associate Professor in the Department of Implementation Science in the School of Medicine and a Member of Wake Forest Baptist Health’s Comprehensive Cancer Center at Wake Forest University. Dr Birken’s research focuses on translating evidence into practice. Specifically, Dr Birken studies middle managers’ role in implementing evidence-based practices, the implementation of innovations in cancer care, improving care coordination, and the selection and application of implementation theories.
Professor Shawn Burke is a Research Professor and Director of the TRACE lab at the Institute for Simulation and Training, University of Central Florida. Her expertise includes teams and their leadership, team adaptability, team training, measurement, evaluation, and team effectiveness. Dr. Burke has published over 90 journal articles and book chapters related to the above topics and has presented/had work accepted at over 200 peer-reviewed conferences. Dr. Burke has received funding from the following agencies: Army Research Institute, Army Research Laboratory, Office of Naval Research, Army Research Office, National Science Foundation, Gulf Oil Research Program, and NASA. Most recently, Dr. Burke has been funded by NASA to investigate issues related to team leadership, team roles, team cognition, and cultural diversity within the context of teams operating in isolated, confined environments (e.g., long duration space exploration) with an eye towards fostering resiliency within such teams. All of the above work is conducted with an interest in team leadership and the training of teams operating in complex environments. She has also recently been funded by the Army Research Institute to investigate issues related to leader and team resilience.
Dr. Burke earned her doctorate in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from George Mason University and is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Trust Research and Consulting Editor for the Journal of Business and Psychology. She also serves as an ad-hoc reviewer for several journals, including: Leadership Quarterly, Group and Organization Management, Organizational Psychology Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, Human Factors, Military Psychology, Small Group Research, and Human Resource Management. She has co-edited books on adaptability, advances in team effectiveness research, and intelligent tutoring for teams.
Paul Cairney is Professor of Politics and Public Policy, University of Stirling. His research interests are in comparative public policy, including: comparisons of policy theories (Understanding Public Policy, 2020), methods (Handbook of Complexity and Public Policy, 2015, co-edited with Robert Geyer) and the use of evidence (The Politics of Evidence-Based Policy Making, 2016); policy outcomes in different countries (Global Tobacco Control, 2012 (with Donley Studlar and Hadii Mamudu), Scottish politics (The Scottish Political System Since Devolution, 2011 and Scottish Politics 2nd ed, 2013 with Neil McGarvey), comparisons of UK and devolved policymaking (‘Has Devolution Changed the British Policy Style?’, British Politics, 3, 3, 350-72), and comparisons of policy outcomes across the UK (‘Policy Convergence, Transfer and Learning in the UK under Devolution’, Regional and Federal Studies, 22, 3, 289-307 with Michael Keating and Eve Hepburn). He was funded (October 2013-15) by the Economic and Social Research Council to research the policymaking process in Scotland, focusing on areas such as preventative spending, and is currently funded by Horizon2020 (IMAJINE) to research policies designed to reduce territorial inequalities. He has written multiple articles on COVID-19 policy in the UK: https://paulcairney.wordpress.com/covid-19/
Professor Lauren Clack holds a PhD in psychology from the University of Zurich and an MSc in Applied Ergonomics from the University of Nottingham.
She began working as a behavioral scientist in the field of hospital infection prevention at the University Hospital Geneva (2011-2012), where she was involved in international research projects that sought to define the core components of infection prevention programs and explore the factors influencing implementation of infection prevention practices in European hospitals.
From 2012 until 2021, she worked as a researcher and project leader at the University Hospital Zürich Department of Infectious Diseases and Hospital Epidemiology, where she specialized in the application of implementation science and user-centered design to improve the systematic integration of evidence-based infection prevention practices into care delivery.
On December 7, 2020, she was appointed Assistant Professor for Implementation Science in Health Care with tenure track at the University of Zurich.
Dr. Erika Crable is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California San Diego. Her research tests the effectiveness of dissemination strategies to enhance the use of science in policymaking, and examines the use of implementation strategies to promote access to evidence-based substance use treatment for publicly insured and criminal-legal-involved populations. She is PI of a National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded study testing dissemination strategies to improve access to medications for opioid use disorder in Medicaid benefit arrays. She is also a Fellow with the National Institute of Health-funded Implementation Research Institute, and previously worked as a policy consultant to several U.S. federal health services agencies.
Dr. Curran’s broad research area has been health services research, with focus areas in 1) diffusion of innovation in a variety of health care settings (e.g., pharmacy, specialty care, primary care, and community settings); and 2) predictors of treatment engagement and outcomes for mental health and substance use disorders. Dr. Curran is a medical sociologist. He is a Professor of Pharmacy Practice and Psychiatry at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). For the past 20 years he has been continually funded by the National Institutes of Health (US), the US Department of Veterans Affairs, and other funders to develop and test a range of implementation strategies designed to support the uptake and sustainment of evidence-based practices. Dr. Curran also has written widely on research design and methodology in implementation science. He is the Director of the Center for Implementation Research, which is supported by the Translational Research Institute (TRI, UL1 TR003107), through the US National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the US National Institutes of Health (US NIH). The Center is devoted to developing and testing implementation strategies across a wide range of service contexts, assisting with the implementation of practices within community practices, and training the next generation of implementation scientists.
Professor John Gabbay’s research, based on qualitative case-study and ethnographic methods, has focussed on the ways in which health professionals use medical knowledge to inform their policy and practice. Since he retired in 2004, he has pursued this work more actively, working closely with Andrée le May in researching how knowledge enters clinical practice, policy & learning, trying to understand how practitioners can more easily use best evidence to improve their everyday work. Besides developing the mindlines model, John and Andrée have also been researching the skills needed for effective quality improvement and applying relational methods of research implementation in health and social care.
John, who qualified in medicine in 1974, is Emeritus Professor of Public Health at the University of Southampton, Honorary Senior Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Public Health, University of Cambridge, and a Senior Member of Darwin College, Cambridge. He entered public health in 1983 after spending several years teaching at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, where his research centred on the social construction of medical knowledge and its epistemological consequences. His career in public health focussed on the acute sector, where he was deeply involved in the (then highly controversial) introduction of medical audit in the UK during the 1980s. He was appointed as the foundation director of the Wessex Institute at the University of Southampton in 1992, where he directed the NHS National Coordinating Centre for Health Technology Assessment from 1998-2004, during which time it developed a vital role in informing the work of NICE. From 2018-2022, he was the joint implementation lead for the East of England Applied Research Collaboration, helping health and social care organisations across the region to use a relational approach grounded in communities of practice to incorporate research findings into local policy and practice.
Prof Hanlon is co-director of the Centre for Global Mental Health at King’s College London. She lives and works in Ethiopia. Her research is focused on developing, testing and implementing interventions that seek to improve the lives of people with mental health conditions in low- and middle-income countries. This includes psychological interventions, broader social/psychosocial interventions, interventions to increase involvement of people with lived experience, service models and system strengthening approaches. Current projects include an NIHR global health research group on homelessness and mental health in Africa (HOPE), and Studying the Context of Psychosis in Ethiopia (SCOPE) to inform earlier and better care at first contact.
Louise is a Senior Research Fellow at King’s College London. She is Deputy Director of the Centre for Implementation Science (https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/cis) and leads the Centre’s Methodology Research theme. She also leads the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) South London Implementation Research theme (https://arc-sl.nihr.ac.uk/).
Since joining the Centre for Implementation Science in 2015, Louise’s research has focused on developing tools to improve the conceptual and methodological quality of implementation research. Louise led the development of the Implementation Science Research Development (ImpRes) tool and guide and an Implementation Outcome Repository (https://implementationoutcomerepository.org/). Louise recently developed a resource for implementation research teams to improve study reporting ( https://arc-sl.nihr.ac.uk/news-insights/latest-news/new-resource-implementation-research-teams-improve-study-reporting) and is currently developing the Implementation Science Research Project Appraisal Criteria (ImpResPAC) tool, a quantitative tool based on ImpRes, to evaluate the conceptual and methodological quality of implementation research. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36526311/
Prior to joining King’s College London, Louise trained as a psychologist and holds a BSc in Psychology and MSc in Research Methods in Psychology. In 2013, she completed her PhD in Patient Safety at Imperial College London. Her expertise and research interests fall within the areas of implementation science, improvement science and patient safety.
Zarnie is an Associate Professor in Health Sciences at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK. Her research focuses on the routine delivery of digital behaviour change interventions for cancer prevention. She contributed to the development of the ImpRes tool and guide to designing implementation research. Her systematic review of implementation outcome instruments used in physical healthcare settings was used to create the Implementation Outcome Repository https://implementationoutcomerepository.org/. She developed the online Introduction to Implementation Science postgraduate module in collaboration with King’s College London, Kingston University and St George’s University, which she leads at UEA.
Dr. Sobia Khan is an award-winning global expert on how to practically implement complex interventions in complex systems. For over 12 years, her passion for integrating multiple fields such as implementation science, systems thinking, and social network theory to achieve large-scale change has been illustrated through her work on multiple implementation projects in Canada, the U.S., Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, Myanmar, and Kosovo. Dr. Khan emphasizes pragmatic and equity-driven approaches, with a particular focus on the need for relationship building, advocacy, and collective action to create change at all levels of the system. Dr. Khan has worked on over 100 implementation research and practice projects in multiple fields and various levels of the system. Recent highlights of Dr. Khan’s work include working on the Design, Analyze and Communicate team at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as a Subject Matter Expert in Implementation Science; leading implementation support activities for the statewide implementation of social and emotional learning (SEL) in California Schools through the CalHope SEL Support initiative; supporting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in their opioid response by embedding implementation science and systems thinking into their tools and approaches; and being an implementation science collaborator with the WHO to support healthcare organizations by building a toolkit on infection prevention and control best practices for COVID-19. She holds an MPH from the University of Waterloo and a PhD from the Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto.
Professor Andrée le May’s longstanding focus on research implementation began in 1986 as Specialist Nurse for R&D at a District General Hospital in West London, a role created to move research into practice across NHS professional groups, specialties and organisations. Staying close to practice through research, service development and education, she has since then taught/mentored/supervised postgraduate students in knowledge management/mobilisation, quality improvement, change-management and clinical leadership. Her research expertise focuses on developing and evaluating implementation techniques especially communities of practice, co-producing evidence-based practice/policy change and researching quality improvement skills. Most recently she has mentored two NIHR Knowledge Mobilisation Fellows; presented a leadership seminar on the value of stories to Johnson & Johnson global executives; published, with others, on a wide number of topics related to implementation such as Forum Theatre, storytelling, and impact assessment and worked closely with John Gabbay to develop their ‘Mindlines Model’ and the effect it has on the successful implementation of evidence. (https://www.routledge.com/Knowledge-Transformation-in-Health-and-Social-Care-Putting-Mindlines-to/Gabbay-May/p/book/9780367746162)
She is Professor Emerita of Nursing at the University of Southampton, Honorary Visiting Senior Fellow at the University of Cambridge, Editor-in-Chief for the National Institute of Health Research’s Health Services and Delivery Research, Public Health, Global Health and Programme Grants for Applied Research journals and co-editor of the Journal of Research in Nursing. She has sat on various research/ implementation funding panels, most recently The Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) Healthcare Cancer programme which is part of the UK government’s and NHS England and NHS Improvement (NHSEI)’s innovation portfolio.
She retired last year as the joint Implementation Lead at the East of England ARC bringing full circle her practical work on implementation within the NHS by co-designing an implementation learning resource ‘art gallery’ featuring the work at the East of England Applied Research Collaboration (https://arc-eoe.nihr.ac.uk/gallery) and working with film as a medium for dissemination.
Rebecca Lengnick-Hall’s research focuses on helping and empowering organizational leaders and staff as they implement and sustain new evidence-based practices. Her work has been supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, Implementation Research Institute, and the IDEAS NIMH-funded ALACRITY Center.
Lengnick-Hall’s research interests include building theory and developing measures for understanding how organizations are connected to the broader system environment—and the concrete ways that this affects implementation and sustainability in mental health service delivery. She is also interested in designing and testing implementation strategies that bridge organizations and service systems and are transferable across contexts.
Jane Lewis has been a key user of and advocate for evidence and implementation science in the UK for a number of years. CEI is an evidence intermediary, working to support the use of evidence in policies and services through evaluation, evidence synthesis and active implementation support. Jane’s work mainly involves evaluating and supporting implementation in child and family services. She has supported organisations including the Education Endowment Foundation and Unicef with scale up of interventions, identifying how to overcome the challenges in extending the reach and impact of effective and tested programmes. She has also recently co-authored a book chapter on the strategies and activities involved in scaling up https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/display/book/9781447365112/9781447365112.xml
https://www.ceiglobal.org/about/our-people/our-team/jane-lewis
Jane was previously Head of UK Programme Development & Quality with Save The Children UK, leading on innovation, programme development, implementation, evaluation and scale-up strategies for SCUK’s domestic programmes. Before that she worked in research and evaluation, and then in research dissemination and utilisation, for organisations including NatCen Social Research, the National Children’s Bureau and Research in Practice.
Sophie is the Implementation and Involvement Manager at the Health Innovation Network (the Academic Health Science Network for south London) and a member of NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) South London’s Implementation & Involvement Team.
With a BSc in Medical Science from the University of Exeter, an MSc in Implementation and Improvement Science from King’s College London and a background in operational and project management in both acute and community settings. Sophie’s role focuses on supporting the involvement of people with lived experience at a project and strategic level across both organisations as well as the translation of evidence-based research into practice.
Hayley Lowther-Payne is a Senior Research Assistant in the Implementation and Capacity Building Team (IMPaCT) at the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration North West Coast (ARC NWC).
She has a background of working in local authority settings supporting children and young people, along with research experience in psychology and neuroscience. In her role at ARC NWC, Hayley is involved in conducting research on the implementation and evaluation of interventions and service changes to address health inequalities in the North West Coast. Areas of research she has been involved in include stroke care improvement methods, community engagement activities in air quality actions, the role of the voluntary sector organisations in integrated care, and evaluating interventions to support community reintegration for prison leavers. Hayley is also currently undertaking a PhD exploring inequalities in access to mental health services during the COVID-19 pandemic for underserved population groups.
Brian S. Mittman, PhD is a Senior Scientist at the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Department of Research and Evaluation with additional affiliations at the University of Southern California (USC) and University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), where he co-leads the UCLA Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) Implementation and Improvement Science Initiative. He previously served as a Visiting Professor in the UCLA School of Public Health and Anderson Graduate School of Management.
Dr. Mittman convened the planning committee that launched the journal Implementation Science and served as co-editor in chief from 2005-2012. He was a founding member of the US Institute of Medicine Forum on the Science of Quality Improvement and Implementation and chaired the National Institutes of Health (NIH) peer review panel on Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health in 2007 and 2010. He directed VA’s Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI) from 2002-2004. He currently serves on the U.S. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Board of External Experts, the Association of American Medical Colleges’ Advisory Panel on Research, and advisory boards for several additional U.S. and international research programs. He is a past member of the Methodology Committee for the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), where he led the Methodology Committee initiative to develop and disseminate methods standards for studying complex health interventions, and a past member of the AcademyHealth Methods Council and Education Council. He has led or supported numerous implementation and improvement science studies and has taught implementation science throughout the US and abroad.
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.
Dr. Julia E. Moore is the Executive Director for The Center for Implementation. Dr. Moore has a PhD from Penn State in Human Development, where she was trained as an implementation scientist, researching the best ways to implement evidence-based programs. She has worked on over 100 implementation projects. Dr. Moore is known internationally for her ability to communicate complex implementation science concepts in clear and practical ways. Dr. Moore developed the online mini-course, Inspiring Change: creating impact with evidence-based implementation, which has been completed by over 7000 professionals from around the world. She is an invited keynote speaker at implementation and healthcare conferences and events. Dr. Moore has worked closely with provincial, national, and international organizations to develop their knowledge translation and implementation plans. Dr. Moore is most passionate about supporting professionals how to use implementation science; she has delivered of dozens workshops to thousands of participants.
Jamie Murdoch is a Senior Lecturer in Social Science and Health in the Department of Population Health Sciences at King’s College London. His research focuses on strengthening health care systems to provide high-quality care in low resourced settings across the life course; conducting process evaluations of complex interventions implemented in health and social care settings; and developing social science methods to investigate health interventions within complex social systems.
Lucy November is a midwife and public health researcher and practitioner with an MSc in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Lucy spent several years living in Sierra Leone working with ex-combatant children and was awarded the Wellbeing of Women’s international midwifery fellowship for 2017, to study the causes of adolescent maternal mortality in Freetown, based at Kings College London. This research has led to Lucy piloting 2YoungLives, a mentoring scheme for vulnerable pregnant teenagers there, for which she is now working with a team from Kings on a pilot cluster RCT.
Professor John Øvretveit works as R&D officer for Stockholm healthcare system and as professor of improvement, implementation and evaluation at the Karolinska Institute medical university Stockholm. Previously he learned the value of thermal underwear at Nordic School of Public Health where he worked for 15 years when establishing and running the quality improvement program at Bergen Medical school, where you can buy the best rain wear at the North Atlantic fisherman stores. He served a frightening 12 years as a board director of the USA joint commission international where he saw the best and worst of healthcare, and serves as a board director of the global implementation society leading their Covid 19 implementation response group. Over his career, he has published over 400 scientific peer-reviewed articles and 12 books.
Byron Powell is an Associate Professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. He is Co-Director of the Brown School’s Center for Mental Health Services Research and Associate Director of the Institute for Public Health’s Center for Dissemination & Implementation, for which he leads the Methods & Metascience Initiative. He aims to improve the quality of health and social services by designing, tailoring, and assessing the effectiveness of implementation strategies and advancing implementation research methods. His research has been funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Fahs-Beck Fund for Research, and Experimentation, and the William T. Grant Foundation. In 2022, he received a Fulbright Specialist Award to Ireland at the University College Cork. Byron is Past-President of the Society for Implementation Research Collaboration, Co-Editor-in-Chief of Implementation Research and Practice, and he serves on the editorial board of Implementation Science. Byron is active in capacity-building initiatives internationally. He serves as the Associate Director designee for the Implementation Research Institute and core faculty for the HIV, Infectious Disease and Global Health Implementation Research Institute; Training Institute for Dissemination and Implementation in Health-Australia; Irish Implementation Science Training Institute; and the UK Implementation Science Masterclass.
Associate Professor Rankin is an implementation scientist who completed a PhD in Behavioural Science in Relation to Medicine at the University of Newcastle in 2000 and has experience working across government cancer agencies (National Breast Cancer Centre, 2001-2003, Cancer Institute NSW, 2004-2006), cancer charities (Cancer Council NSW 2017-2019) and academia (2006-2009; 2012-ongoing). She was awarded an International fellowship in the Mentored Training in Dissemination and Implementation Research in Cancer (MT-DIRC), Washington University in St Louis, USA (2016-2018) and in 2020 was the recipient of the Lesley J. Fleming Churchill Fellowship (Health and Medicine category).
A major focus of Nicole’s research interests is lung cancer; her research portfolio in this context extends from screening, early detection, and management through multidisciplinary care through to palliation and survivorship. Nicole is also a media spokesperson for the Lung Foundation Australia. A/Prof Rankin’s committee membership includes the Expert Management Group for Breast Screen Australia (Commonwealth appointment) and scientific committee member for Primary Care Collaborative Cancer Clinical Trials Group (PC4) Scientific Committee. She is co-chair of INSPIRE, the Psycho-Oncology Co-operative Research Group (PoCoG) Special Interest Group in Implementation Science. She is Associate Editor of Implementation Science Communications journal.
Jane Sandall is a Professor of Women’s Social Science and Women’s Health at King’s College London and seconded to NHS England to lead maternity and midwifery research. . She is an NIHR Senior Investigator Emerita and has a clinical background in nursing, health visiting and midwifery and an academic background in social sciences. Her research has investigated implementation of open disclosure in perinatal care, how midwife continuity of care may improve quality of care for women at higher risk of pre-term birth and innovations in how services are delivered to improve safety, quality, and women’s experience.
She is leading the implementation evaluation research theme in the Tommys National Centre for Maternity Improvement developing a clinical decision tool to reduce improve preterm birth and stillbirth. She is leading the maternity and Perinatal mental Health theme in NIHR ARC South London and leads research on reducing inequalities in care and outcomes for women and babies. She is a member of NIHR CRIBBS Global Health Group to prevent maternal and perinatal mortality and morbidity in Sierra Leone.
She is a member of WHO STAGE Strategic and Technical Advisory Group of Experts (STAGE) on Maternal, Newborn, Child, and Adolescent Health and Nutrition and contributes to a range of NIHR and MRC research boards.
Her research findings have informed English, Scottish, US, Brazilian, Irish and Australian reviews of maternity services and WHO.
Dr Tayana Soukup, BSc, MSc, PhD. A psychologist by training, Dr Soukup has completed an NIHR-funded PhD at Imperial College London focused exclusively on cancer multidisciplinary team (MDT) functioning, has worked extensively in the field, and has published numerous papers on evaluating and improving MDTs. Dr Soukup’s expertise includes evaluations of MDTs in real-time, video-based team analytic methods, psychometric development of tools for MDTs, team-based quality-improvements, mixed methodology and implementation science.
Dr Soukup has a longstanding experience of studying MDTs, delivering MDT improvement, and training MDT members, in the UK and overseas, which has been well received and given excellent feedback. Together with her team, Dr Soukup has scientifically studied the workings of cancer MDTs, and has built an extensive evidence-base – with evidence on the factors that promote and those that hinder teams to review patients holistically within a meeting and make implementable and suitable for the patient care recommendations. Dr Soukup has also with her team developed evidence-based tools for the assessment and improvement of the performance of MDTs. These can be used by clinicians, administrators or researchers to gain a reliable and valid understanding of how their MDTs are performing and can be used as part of audit or quality improvement initiatives to improve the delivery of care for patients. They can be applied at different points along the MDT pathway: for pre-MDT meeting case selection; for intra-MDT meeting streamlining; and for team reflection, assessment and team building.
Dr Salisbury is a UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellow, Deputy Director of the Centre for Global Mental Health, and Co-Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Research and Training in Mental Health at King’s College London. She blends human-centred design, systems thinking and implementation science to actively engage communities in the development of scalable and sustainable solutions to positively transform their health, wealth, and relationships. Her fellowship focuses on improving mental health outcomes in Kenyan and Mozambican adolescents during pregnancy and the year after birth through co-design with local communities. Her other current work includes research into stigma and stigma reducing interventions and the development and evaluation of an electronic version of the WHO’s Mental Health Gap Action Plan (mhGAP) intervention guide to improve detection and treatment of mental disorders by community health workers in Nepal and Nigeria.
Professor Sir Graham Thornicroft is Professor of Community Psychiatry at the Centre for Global Mental Health and Centre for Implementation Science, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), King’s College London. He also works as a consultant psychiatrist at South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust in a local community mental health team in Lambeth. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, is a National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Senior Investigator Emeritus and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, of King’s College London and of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He is director of NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) South London.
I have been a nurse for over 35 years, working primarily in public health, early intervention and safeguarding children. I am currently Nurse Consultant in the Chief Public Health Nurse Directorate within the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, Department of Health and Social Care. I work on increasing access to evidence-based parenting support for families facing multiple disadvantage which includes delivery of the Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) programme in England. FNP is a preventative early intervention nursing programme working with young first-time mothers during pregnancy and up until their child is two. My role involves strategic development and clinical leadership of the programme in England, focusing on evidence-based practice, quality improvement and system wide implementation to improve outcomes for vulnerable children and families.
Professor Cecilia Vindrola is a Professorial Research Fellow in the Department of Targeted Intervention at University College London. She is the Director of the Rapid Research Evaluation and Appraisal Lab (RREAL), an interdisciplinary team with an interest in the development of rapid approaches to research so findings can be used to inform changes in policy and practice. Prof Vindrola has written extensively on the field of rapid research and evaluation and has led on rapid studies for organisations such as the World Health Organisation (WHO), Doctors without Borders, the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), Health Education England (HEE), NHS England and Improvement (NHSE/I), and the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology (POST). Prof Vindrola leads an intensive training programme on rapid research and evaluation delivered face to face and online to over 500 attendees per year. She also acts as an advisor and work package lead for five NIHR-funded studies, covering a wide range of topics on health service delivery and patient experiences of care.
Dr Nicole Votruba is a senior postdoctoral researcher in implementation science at the University of Oxford, Nuffield Department of Women’s & Reproductive Health, where she is leading a process evaluation of the SMARThealth Pregnancy programme, a large RCT to improve life-long health for women in rural India. She is also leading the design and implementation of the SMARThealth Pregnancy and Mental Health (PRAMH) study, a mental health community intervention for women in rural India. She is a research associate with the George Institute for Global Health (UK), co-coordinator of the global Indigo Local programme to reduce stigma and discrimination in mental health, and has developed the EVITA 2.0 action framework for mental health research evidence translation to policy.
Andrew Walker is Head of Insights at the Health Innovation Network (the Academic Health Science Network for south London) and Deputy Lead for NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) South London’s Implementation & Involvement Team. A physiotherapist with a PhD in implementation science, Andrew’s role involves helping to build the evidence and practice of implementing innovation and evidence-based interventions across health and care, with a particular interest in spread and adoption. His work at the Health Innovation Network has an emphasis focus on digital technology and health inequalities. He has experience of designing and delivering mixed methods evaluation and research studies working within the NHS, central government, academia, and research consultancy.
Dr Julie Williams is a post-doctoral researcher in the Centre for Implementation Science, King’s College London and an Occupational Therapist. Her research interests are implementation in mental health services, the physical health of people with serious mental illness, and how service users and clinical staff are involved in research. She currently works on the Integrating our Mental and Physical Health Care Systems Project, which is working on improving the physical health of people using mental health services.
Arne Wolters is Implementation Lead for the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration North East and North Cumbria. His role is co-funded between the ARC NENC and Academic Health Science Network (AHSN) NENC. He has also joined Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW) as Head of Improvement Analytics – and his time is shared across the ARC NENC and CNTW roles.
Arne previously worked at the Health Foundation where he led the Improvement Analytics Unit. He has also worked at the London School of Economics and the University of Essex, supporting research infrastructure, and facilitating access to data to support social science research. Arne has a background in Econometrics, and has built expertise in applying robust statistical inference methods in observational studies, aimed at deriving useful and actionable insights for decision makers to support better outcomes for patients.
In addition to his analytical expertise, he has expertise in bridging the gap between the health care sector and academia, engaging local and national stakeholders, PPIE, and has led on the development of various secure data environment or trusted research environments.