Plenary & Panel Speakers

Annette

Boaz

Annette Boaz is professor of Health and Social Care Policy at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

She has more than 25 years of experience in supporting the use of evidence across a range of policy domains. She was part of one of the largest UK investments in the evidence use landscape, the ESRC Centre for Evidence Based Policy and Practice and has undertaken an international leadership role in promoting the use of evidence. She is a founding editor of the international journal Evidence & Policy and has recently published a book on evidence use: ‘What Works Now.’ With Kathryn Oliver, she leads Transforming Evidence, an international initiative designed to support the use of research evidence in different policy fields and contexts. She has a particular research interest in stakeholder involvement, the role of partnerships in promoting research use, implementation science and service improvement. She has worked in the UK Department of Health and also the Government Office for Science. She is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and a member of the WHO European Advisory Committee on Health Research.

Shaun

Danquah

Founder of Centric

Shaun Danquah, the founder of Centric, broke out of the statistical mold of what was expected for a young man from his heritage. He took his experiences and learnings from subverting the stereotypes about working-class Black male underachievement with him into the educational and professional spheres. Shaun earned a B.A. in Political Science & Government from Brunel University, an M.A. in Urban Regeneration from the University of Westminster, and a P.H.D. in ‘Assessing the inter-play between gang criminality and jihadi narratives within the public space’ from London Metropolitan University. His edification informs the importance Centric places on ensuring that the people are at the forefront of what they do.

Centric believes that those who have lived the challenges of underserved communities know better about them. The organization has built a platform for the ‘hard to reach’ to gain access to research to tell their realities, experiences, truth and lessons. Centric provides healing for the deepest, darkest pain and a strong sense of empathy towards those going through issues and about to embark on perilous journeys. Their work is not about appeasement; it’s about being real about the desire to improve the situation through access in the academic world.

Centric’s environment is very different from the comforts of middle England; therefore, the organization strategizes approaches that came to terms with the uncertainty of their existence. Centric is ready to address the unknown as they know first-hand that “smooth seas never made a skilled sailor”.

The three core components behind what they do are Empowerment (Cultural esteem, equity, leadership), Ownership (Entrepreneurialism, street corner innovation, harnessing and unearthing talent within urban locales), and Sustainability (Creating vehicles that continue good service and build a legacy). Shaun Danquah is on a cultural-centric exploration to rethink how research is done across the urban milieu to ensure that unheard voices are heard and that the right people are sitting at the table where decisions about the future are made.

At the Implementation Science Research Conference, drawing on his extensive experience and knowledge of best practices in community development, Shaun will share his insights on how to effectively engage communities in the process of developing and implementing initiatives that are locally driven, culturally appropriate, and sustainable.

Anne MacFarlane

MacFarlane

B.A., M.A., PhD

Professor of Primary Healthcare Research, School of Medicine

Anne is founder and overall academic lead for the Public and Patient Involvement Research Unit, which is a WHO Collaborating Centre for Participatory Health Research with Refugees and Migrants. She is a social scientist with extensive experience of qualitative research, participatory health research, implementation science and refugee and migrant health.Anne is Principal Investigator for multiple national and international participatory health research projects. She was Co-ordinator for the 2.9 million euro EU funded participatory, implementation science RESTORE project (2011-2015). Anne is active in international networks in the United Kingdom, Europe and North America to advance the evidence base about best practice for participatory implementation research. Her current research interests centre around the sociological concept of participatory space and how this can enhance understanding about health decision-making and knowledge translation.

Anne was PI for the HRBand IRC-funded PPI IGNITE (2018-2021) and part of UL’s team for the HRB and IRC funded PPI Ignite National Network (2021-2026). In recent years, she has successfully co-ordinated participatory research about migrant health: the EU-funded RESTORE (2011-2015) REsearch into implementation STrategies to support patients of different ORigins and language background in a variety of European primary care settings and the HRB-funded EMH-IC (2016-2019) Ethnic Minority Health in Ireland – building the evidence base to address health inequities.

Allison

Metz

Professor of the Practice Director of Implementation Practice

Allison Metz, Ph.D., is a developmental psychologist with expertise in child development and family systems and a commitment to improving child and family outcomes and advancing equity. Allison specializes in the implementation of evidence to achieve social impact for children and families in a range of human service and education areas, with an emphasis on child welfare and early childhood service contexts. Allison is Professor of the Practice and Director of Implementation Practice at the School of Social Work, Faculty Fellow at the FPG Child Development Institute, and Adjunct Professor at the School of Global Public Health at The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She is also an Adjunct Professor at the School of Medicine at Trinity College Dublin. Allison previously served as Director of the National Implementation Research Network and Lead of the Implementation Science Division at the FPG Child Development Institute where she also served as a Senior Research Scientist for 13 years. Allison’s research interests include the role of trust, power and relationships in evidence use, competencies for supporting implementation, and co-creation strategies to support sustainable change. She is particularly interested in the development of a workforce for supporting implementation in public systems. Allison is co-chair of the Institute on Implementation Practice and founding director of the Collaborative for Implementation Practice at UNC-Chapel Hill School of Social Work. She is the co-editor of the widely read volume Applying Implementation Science in Early Childhood Programs and Systems.

Brian S.

Mittman

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.   

David

Pencheon

Honorary Professor, Health and Sustainable Development, University of Exeter

David Pencheon is a UK trained doctor and was the founder Director of the Sustainable Development Unit for NHS England and Public Health England, established in 2007.  He left the SDU on 1st January 2018 and is now an Honorary Professor and an Associate at the Medical and Health School at the University of Exeter, UK, an Advisory Group member and associate with the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, a trans-disciplinary centre, and a collaborator with the European Centre for Environment and Health and the Global Systems Institute, all at the University of Exeter  He has held appointments at University College London (UCL), and is a visiting Professor at the Centre for Environment and Sustainability (CES) at the University of Surrey, and was appointed an Adjunct Professor at Monash University in Melbourne in 2020.  In 2018 he was a visiting scholar at the University of Sydney, Australia.

David Pencheon was previously Director of the Public Health Observatory in Cambridge from 2001 to 2007.  He has worked as a clinical doctor in the NHS, a joint Director of Public Health in North Cambridgeshire, a Public Health Training Director, with the NHS R&D programme, and in rural China in the early 1990s with Save the Children Fund (UK).

His current roles within these Departments in Exeter is to understand the role of health professionals and health systems in ensuring a safe, equitable and prosperous planet for all.  This work is with both undergraduates (with Special Study Modules) and with postgraduates, particularly via the Planetary Health module of the MPH programme.

He was awarded the OBE in the 2012 New Year’s Honours List for services to public health and to the NHS. In 2020 David was awarded the BMJ’s “Outstanding Contribution to Health Award”.

Enola

Proctor

Professor of social work research, Washington University, USA.

Enola Proctor’s research is motivated by the question, how do we ensure that people receive the very best possible care? She has studied this question in a variety of social work, public health, and health care settings, ranging from hospitals to community agencies. She has contributed to the intellectual capital for the rapidly growing field of dissemination and implementation science, leading teams to distinguish, clearly define, develop taxonomies, and stimulate more systematic work to advance the conceptual, linguistic, and methodological clarity in the field. 

Proctor’s research has been funded by the NIA, AHRQ, and the NIMH for 26 consecutive years. She directs the Implementation Research Institute, a training program in implementation science funded by the National Institute for Mental Health. She led the establishment of several university-wide centers and cores in implementation science, including the Center for Dissemination and Implementation for the Washington University Institute for Public Health and the Dissemination and Implementation Research Core for Washington University’s CTSA program. 

Proctor’s awards include Washington University’s Arthur Compton Holly Distinguished Faculty Award, the Society for Social Work and Research’s Distinguished Research Award, and the American Public Health Association Stephen M. Banks Award for Outstanding Mentoring in mental health services.

Muhammed

Rauf

Head of Business Development at Centric

Muhammed is a Community Researcher with a keen motivation to instil a competent level of financial literacy throughout his own network and across the urban locale.

Throughout his foray working in a variety of industries, such as telecommunications, travel and financial planning, Muhammed discovered in his eyes that ‘hard work without understanding your own purpose is meaningless’. Subsequently, Muhammed discovered a niche for himself using the breadth of his skills to make a big impact when he joined the social sector. He is currently paving the way in the rethinking of research and ethics, whilst also building firm relationships within the sector to further the impact and insight of the research projects that are underway.

Muhammed now determines to ‘choose your purpose, it will not choose you’ in reference to having found a vocation that truly meets his values and his aspirations for himself as a man and his contribution to the community. He established his own consultancy, The Rauf Company, in early 2021.

Muhammed graduated from Kingston in 2017 with a 2:1 in BSc Business Management.

Malabika

Sarkar

Adjunct Professor of BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University, Bangladesh

Dr. Malabika Sarker is the Adjunct Professor of BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University, Bangladesh. She served as the Acting Dean in 2015. As a mixed-method specialist and implementation researcher, Professor Sarker oversees the research activity and leads the Center of Excellence of Science of Implementation & Scale-Up (SISU).

In her 30 years of public health career, she spent ten years implementing community-based programs at BRAC, the world’s largest NGO. As the Associate Dean, Prof Sarker manages finance and HR with the Dean and actively engages in developing a wide range of policies for institutionalized infrastructure. Prof Sarker is the inaugural research director and founder chair of the Institutional Review Board. Professor Sarker is a physician with a Master’s in Public Health (MPH) from Harvard University, the USA, and a Doctorate in Public Health from the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Professor Sarker was a research faculty at the Heidelberg Institute of Global Health (HIGH), Germany, before joining BRAC JPGSPH and is continuing teaching as an adjunct faculty. During her career, she has taught across four continents and has extensive research experience in Sub- Saharan Africa and Bangladesh. She has been awarded over US$ 10 million in research/capacity-building grants and has published 126 peer-reviewed articles and four book chapters.

She is also the international advisory board member of The Lancet Global Health, World Federation Public Health Association, Medical Research Council UK, National Institute of Health Research UK, Chair of the Advisory Board of the HRP Alliance for Research Capacity Strengthening (RCS), and an Evaluation Advisory Committee Member of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. Prof Sarker was awarded the Heroines of Health global award in 2018.

Marie-Therese

Schultes

Dr Marie-Therese Schultes is an educational and health psychologist and postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Implementation Science in Health Care, University of Zurich. Marie-Therese chairs the German Speaking Implementation Association. Her research centres on implementation evaluation, assessment of implementation outcomes, development of implementation competencies and capacity building for implementation science.

6th UK and Ireland Implementation Science Research Conference 2023