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.