Professor Fiona Brooks
Professor Fiona Brooks is a medical sociologist, with an undergraduate degree from the University of Warwick and PhD from the University of Sheffield.
Fiona is currently leading a number of projects addressing adolescents and children’s voices in health encounters; she has been PI on the HBSC England project since 2008. Fiona has secured research funding from the Department of Health UK, Department for Education UK, The British Academy, UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the European Union via the Marie Sklodowska Curie scheme, as well as leading national charities. She has published widely on the determinants of health and well-being and assets for young people, and since 2009 she has been editor and author of the biennial publication Key Data in Adolescence. Fiona is also associate editor of the Journal Health and Social Care in the Community. Fiona is a founder member of the UK charity The Association for Young People’s Health (AYPH).
In 2015, Fiona joined University Technology Sydney working in the Faculty of Health as Associate Dean (Research), and then Acting Dean of Health. In 2019, she was appointed Assistant Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research): Development. During this time, Fiona has been awarded a 2019 Discovery Project grant from the Australian Research Council.
Dr Ellen Klemera
Dr Ellen Klemera has been working as a Senior Research Fellow in the Health, Young People and Family Lives unit at CRIPACC, University of Hertfordshire since 2005. Since 2016 she has been deputy PI for the HBSC England study, and in 2018 she became Co-PI of the project alongside Prof Fiona Brooks.
Ellen obtained her PhD in Developmental and Educational Psychology in Tbilisi (Georgia) and MSc in Research Methods in Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire (2005). She has expertise in young people’s and children’s health and emotional well-being through leading several projects investigating young people’s health, including the Eastern European Community Engagement Project, Santander Partnership Research Collaboration Support 2016-17 project, British Academy funded Research project to work on Bilingual (bicultural) children’s well-being in UK and Georgia and others. Ellen has disseminated research relating to young people’s health and well-being in areas of adolescents’ family life and parental communication, self-harm and physical activity through national and international publications and conferences.
Ellen is constantly developing networks, both in the frame of HBSC and around the world, to identify sources of funding, and she continues to build relationships in other countries for future activities (Georgia, Russia, and other Eastern European countries). As a chair of the HBSC Family Culture Focus Group, Ellen also coordinates development of the research on adolescent family life for the HBSC study.
Professor Sally Kendall
As a NMC registered academic community nurse and health visitor, my main research interest is in primary and community health care, especially research that seeks to improve the health and wellbeing of families and children in the community. I hold a strong belief in working in partnership with parents and families and understanding their needs to inform research and practice, most recently the experiences of women in Ukraine of perinatal mental health issues, Becoming Breast Feeding Friendly in UK and parenting using the TOPSE evaluation tool.
As a nurse and health visitor I have promoted the role of nursing in primary and community care throughout my career and supervised and managed multiple practice-based studies that examine the public health contribution to primary health care practice and policy. With my co-researchers I developed and validated the TOPSE tool for measuring parenting self-efficacy (www.topse.org) that is now widely used nationally and internationally. This has led to research with Aboriginal communities in Western Australia where I am Adjunct Professor and the Sir Walter Murdoch outstanding International Scholar at Murdoch University. I recently led the Becoming Breastfeeding Friendly project across the UK in collaboration with Yale School of Public Health and am currently working with the Children’s Policy Research Unit at UCL on several NIHR funded studies related to the evaluation of the Family Nurse Partnership in England, the delivery of the Health Visiting Service and Adverse Childhood Experiences.
As the lead for research capacity in the NIHR ARC for Kent, Surrey and Sussex, I also have a great interest in mentorship and supporting the health care workforce to develop their clinical and academic careers as a route to bringing transformation to health care delivery and outcomes for patients and families.
Tamsyn Eida
I completed my MSc in Health Psychology at Liverpool John Moores University and previously, an MA in Applied Theatre at the University of Manchester. I have a BSc in Psychology from the University of Northumbria at Newcastle. Prior to joining CHSS, I worked on programmes examining and developing the accessibility of health and public services, particularly for migrants and racialised minorities. I have more than 10 years’ experience of delivering training, programme evaluation, community involvement and policy development around these issues. Previously, I also worked with VSO, ICRC and UNICEF in a range of roles including teaching, arts development, protection and interpreting.
I joined CHSS as a Research Assistant in June 2017 and have collaborated with CHSS colleagues, NHS, public health, education and community partners to deliver a series of research projects. These include evaluating community-based projects and co-produced NHS training programmes, as well as bringing together evidence and stakeholders to build recommendations to improve the breastfeeding environment and health practitioner involvement in research. Through this, I have gained experience in mixed methods evaluation, case study, consensus building and qualitative approaches.
My main research interest is in improving access to and communication within healthcare, and building awareness and support for operational staff within progressive strategic and policy frameworks.
Erica Ferris
Erica completed her undergraduate degree in Psychology at the University of Hull in 2016, followed by a masters in Health Psychology at King’s College London in 2017. She started a PhD in public health at the University of Birmingham in the institute of applied health research in 2018. This has included conducting a mixed-methods systematic review and running a primary qualitative study within an NHS paediatric hospital. She joined CHSS part-time in September 2021, alongside the ongoing PhD to work as a research assistant on the HBSC England project.
Dr Sabina Hulbert
Dr Sabina Hulbert completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Padua (Italy) with a specialization in Work and Industrial Psychology followed by a PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Kent in 1996. She has since been a lecturer and then senior lecturer at the University of Greenwich and at Canterbury Christ Church University. Lately, she has been appointed as an Academic Research Lead at Canterbury Christ Church University and has recently joined RDS SE as a Research Adviser. During this period she has developed significant experience in quantitative data analysis and advanced statistical techniques collaborating in number of research projects.
Sabina has been involved in a number funded projects in applied health research looking, for instance, at the positive effects that singing, manipulating artefacts in a museum context, looking at art, etc. can have on the wellbeing of Alzheimer patients and their carers. She is currently collaborating on a large scale multicentre international study testing the effectiveness of educational programs on the way Type 2 Diabetes patients manage their illness. In terms of health promotion, she has experience with large scale studies evaluating the role of physical activity in reducing the risk of Type 2 Diabetes in residents of a high risk south London area and the role of health screening in improving the wellbeing of patients with severe mental health problems. All of her research activities in applied health settings have had an element of PPI which typically results in improved measurement tools, research design and overall significance and reach.
She is an experienced supervisor having successfully supervised at Master, Clinical Doctorate, Educational Doctorate and PhD level.
Sabina has also collaborated on research projects more focussed on methodological aspects of research, like validation of measuring scales and instruments (e.g. Risk of Gang Affiliation in teenagers; assessment of cognitive abilities after brain injuries; Italian WISC-IV and WAIS equivalent) and the psychometric properties of diagnostic tools.
Her expertise focuses on quantitative research designs, construction of attitude measurement tools, validation studies, data management of large scale datasets, psychometrics, cohort studies and survey design in general.