The Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research and Policy (SCPHRP) is a collaborative effort, with members spanning the United Kingdom and beyond, and featuring a mix of SCPHRP employees, academics, policy makers, practitioners, and volunteers/professionals from the third sector.
The core team is based in the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and is administratively housed within the School of Health in Social Science.
SCPHRP Co-Directors
Ruth Jepson (Co-Director)
Ruth is Professor of Public Health in the School of Health in Social Science, University of Edinburgh and one of the SCPHRP Co-Directors. She is co-Director of the GroundsWell Consortium (https://ukprp.org/what-we-fund/groundswell/) and a co-Investigator on PHIRST Fusion https://phirst.nihr.ac.uk/ She is particularly interested developing and evaluating complex interventions and in undertaking research in partnership with service providers and users and has recently written a book on the subject with other members of SCPHRP (Developing Public Health Interventions)
Email: Ruth.Jepson@ed.ac.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruth-jepson-377a55105/
View Ruth’s full research profile at https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/persons/ruth-jepson
Larry Doi (Co-Director)
Larry is a Senior Lecturer in Applied Public Health in the School of Health in Social Sciences and one of the SCPHRP Co-Directors. He received his PhD in Public Health from the University of Stirling. He holds a master’s degree in Public Health from the University of Edinburgh and an honours degree in Biology from the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. He also holds a postgraduate certificate in Academic Practice from the University of Edinburgh and he is a Fellow at the Higher Education Academy. His methodological expertise is in systematic reviews, developing and evaluating complex public health interventions, evaluability assessment and realist evaluation. In line with SCPHRP’s mandate, he is interested in undertaking research in collaboration with decision makers and service users. His research interest is in maternal and child health. Larry has been involved in several research projects and he is currently Principal Investigator on a Scottish Government funded grant to evaluate the universal health visiting pathway in Scotland. He is also currently the Postgraduate Research Director (Nursing Studies) and a course organiser a number of courses, including Global Public Health (both on-campus and Online) and the MN Dissertations.
Email: Larry.Doi@ed.ac.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larry-doi-95971a98/
View Larry’s full research profile at https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/persons/larry-doi
Andrew James Williams (Co-Director)
Andrew is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Health in Social Sciences and the last of the SCPHRP Co-Directors. Andrew’s research interests lie in the social and cultural determinants of health (the fifth wave of public health), especially among children and young people, particularly through the application and exploration of theories such as complexity theory and salutogenesis. His research is often collaborative and transdisciplinary, including engaged research (such as his work with the TR14ers) and co-production approaches. Andrew employs both quantitative and participatory methods to the evaluation and study of a range of public health interventions such as 20mph speed limits, central heating systems and school-based intervention.
Email: andrew.j.williams@ed.ac.uk
LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/andrew-james-williams-39598243
View Larry’s full research profile: https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/persons/andrew-williams
Chancellor’s Fellows
Glenna Nightingale (Chancellor’s Fellow)
Glenna is interested in applying statistical principles to real-world problems in public health, ecology, and demography. I enjoy data visualization, building R Shiny apps, and teaching statistics through data storyboarding. Glenna specializes in the use of Point process models, Bayesian inference, Spatial epidemiology, Natural experiment evaluation, and time series modeling.
Some of her work can be found here: http://www.glennanightingale.com/
Email: Glenna.Nightingale@ed.ac.uk
Divya Sivaramakrishnan (Chancellor’s Fellow)
Divya is a Chancellor’s Fellow with the Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research and Policy, Department of Nursing Studies. She is a mixed methods researcher with experience in intervention development and evaluation. Her research interests include development and evaluation of public health interventions, healthy ageing, and physical activity and sedentary behaviour across varied populations.
Divya was a postdoctoral researcher on the Stand Up for Health project, which aimed to reduce sedentary behaviour in contact centres. The NIHR funded project evaluated the feasibility of the programme, using a cluster randomised stepped wedge study design. Divya has completed her PhD at the Physical Activity for Health Centre, University of Edinburgh on developing a yoga intervention for older adults. She is also a yoga teacher.
She is currently working on health ageing in India, and is collaborating with researchers in ISEC, Bangalore to understand ageism and age norms in Urban India. She is also working with the Physical activity for Health Research Centre on developing interventions to reduce sedentary behaviour while working from home, as well as physical activity and menopause.
Email: Divya.Sivaramakrishnan@ed.ac.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/divya-sivaramakrishnan-56a4729/
GroundsWell team
Stephen Malden (Researcher, GroundsWell)
Stephen is a research fellow based within SCPHRP at the University of Edinburgh. Stephen joined SCPHRP in 2015, before completing his PhD in childhood obesity/public health at the University of Strathclyde. Stephen has a varied research background having experience in health services research, health informatics, systematic reviews/meta-analyses and the development/evaluation of public health interventions. His research interests include childhood obesity, health benefits and determinants of physical activity, health inequalities, and the impact of urban greenspace on health.
Stephen returned to SCPHRP from the Usher Institute in 2022, where he will be responsible for co-designing and evaluating community-based public health interventions in urban green and blue spaces as part of the GroundsWell Consortium. For more information about GroundsWell see: https://ukprp.org/what-we-fund/groundswell/
Email: Stephen.malden@ed.ac.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-malden-40633078
Craig McDougall (Researcher, GroundsWell)
Craig is a part-time research assistant working on the GroundsWell project https://ukprp.org/what-we-fund/groundswell/. He is also a final year PhD student at the University of Stirling. Craig’s PhD research explores the effects of spending time in and around natural environments on physical and mental health, with a specific focus on freshwater environments (or blue spaces). He is particularly interested in health geography and environmental justice and frequently uses GIS-based methods to investigate urban health and health inequality. Before joining SCPHRP, Craig obtained a B.Sc. (Hons) in Environmental Management from Glasgow Caledonian University, where he conducted research on inequalities in green space accessibility in West Glasgow.
Email: cmcdoug3@exseed.ed.ac.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-mcdougall-5b0800231/
Members
Jillian Manner (Research Fellow)
Jillian joined SCPHRP in 2017. She is currently a Research Fellow on the PHIRST Elevate Team, based across the Physical Activity for Health Research Centre (PAHRC) and SCPHRP. She is interested in workplace wellbeing, intervention development for public health. and qualitative research methods. Jillian is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA) and an Exercise Physiologist.
The title of her PhD was: Improving employee wellbeing from the top down: The importance of organisational culture in the planning and delivery of workplace health programmes.
Email: Jillian.Manner@ed.ac.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillianmanner/
Caroline Brett (Lecturer)
Caroline is a health psychologist who joined Edinburgh University as a lecturer in clinical psychology in February 2023. She completed her MSc Health Psychology at Stirling and her professional doctorate in health psychology at City University, London, while working as a research assistant on studies affiliated to the Lothian Birth Cohorts – longitudinal studies of health and wellbeing in older adults. Caroline is also an honorary research fellow at Liverpool John Moores University, where she spent 7 years teaching health and positive psychology.
Caroline’s research interests have been a rather eclectic mix of topics relating to health and wellbeing, with collaborators from psychology, public health, epidemiology, education, primary care, and the creative arts. Her main interests are in the psychosocial determinants of wellbeing – including personality, resilience, sense of coherence, and social support – and the effectiveness and mechanisms of non-clinical interventions such as nature-based interventions and social prescribing in enhancing health and wellbeing. She is particularly interested in developing robust, co-developed evaluation frameworks for complex interventions, and has been involved in several such projects in the Liverpool City Region.
You can read more about Caroline’s research work here: https://www.ed.ac.uk/profile/dr-caroline-e-brett
Email: caroline.brett@ed.ac.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caroline-brett-5633a88a/
Catherine Clarissa (Clarissa) (Lecturer)
Clarissa is a Lecturer in Nursing (Life Sciences) in the School of Health in Social Science and a Registered Nurse (RN) in Indonesia and the UK. She earned her Professional Degree in Nursing (RN) and her Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) at Universitas Indonesia. She completed her MSc in Advancing Nursing Practice and her PhD in Nursing Studies at the University of Edinburgh. She is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). As a critical care nurse by background, Clarissa has a strong passion for improving critically ill patients’ recovery. Her research interests lie in the area of the recovery and rehabilitation of critically ill patients and young adults after stroke. Her doctoral research explored staff experiences relating to early mobilisation of mechanically ventilated patients in intensive care. She has been involved in research projects on post-stroke rehabilitation for young adults.
Email: Catherine.clarissa@ed.ac.uk
View Clarissa’s full research profile at https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/persons/clarissa-clarissa
Dr Elaine Haycock-Stuart (Senior Lecturer)
Dr Elaine Haycock-Stuart is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Health in Social Science.
Elaine’s overarching research programme has a public health and service organisation and delivery focus. Research has a focus on public health nursing and health care in the community context. Employing mixed methods or qualitative approaches in the research process.
Elaine is a Co-Investigator European funded ERASMUS programme A new agenda for nurse educator education in Europe 2020-1-FI01-KA203-066590
Elaine was award a Chief Scientist Office (CSO) Health Service Research Training Fellowship to undertake doctoral studies (PhD1999) examining Sense and Susceptibility: How mothers’ view accidental injury risk and develop safety strategies for pre-school children. Elaine continued to work as a health visitor in Central Scotland whilst studying towards her doctoral studies. Elaine is a Churchill Fellow (1996 lifetime award) and the focus of the fellowship explored unintentional injury prevention strategies in Australia and New Zealand.
https://www.ed.ac.uk/profile/dr-elaine-haycock-stuart
Email e.a.haycock-stuart@ed.ac.uk
Ewelina Rydzewska (Lecturer in Health Futures)
Ewelina joined the University of Edinburgh in January 2022 as a Lecturer in Health Futures at the Edinburgh Futures Institute and School of Health in Social Science. She is also an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow’s Institute of Health and Wellbeing where she had previously worked as a Research Fellow for the Scottish Learning Disabilities Observatory. In her research, Ewelina investigates population demographics, health needs and determinants of health for people with autism and/or intellectual disabilities, using big data and data linkage methodologies. Ewelina’s work draws on various fields, such as public health, epidemiology, developmental and clinical psychology, which means that she often seeks to cross disciplinary and methodological boundaries between health and social sciences and quantitative and qualitative research. You can read more about Ewelina’s work here.
Jenny Ordoñez Betancourth (Researcher)
Jenny is from Colombia and received her PhD in Population Health Sciences from the University of Edinburgh in 2020, funded by the Newton Fund and the Colombian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MINCIENCIAS). Her PhD thesis aimed to understand the role of ethnicity for framing childhood obesity as a public health problem and it was supervised by Raj Bhopal, Ruth Jepson and Louise Marryat. Jenny holds a BSc in Physiotherapy, a Masters in Epidemiology (both from Universidad del Valle, Colombia). Since 2008, she has been involved in research in environmental epidemiology at the Epidemiology and Population Health Group (GESP) at the same university. Her methodological expertise is in systematics reviews, causal diagrams and quantitative approaches for analysing health inequalities. Her research interest focus on the social and commercial determinants of health, particularly on child and maternal health. Jenny is currently located in Colombia working at the Universidad del Valle as a lecturer in research methods, disability & pubic health and supervising postgraduate students´ research projects. Jenny enjoys tapestry weaving and writing poetry.
Email: jennyeord@gmail.com
Jenny van Bekkum (Daphne Jackson Research Fellow)
Jenny joined SCPHRP in October 2023 as a Daphne Jackson Research Fellow. Working alongside the Groundswell consortium (https://ukprp.org/what-we-fund/groundswell/), her research focusses on investigating the causal mechanisms associated with urban biodiversity and the prevention and treatment of non communicable diseases. She is a mixed-methods researcher with experience in designing, implementing, and evaluating interventions, and has a particular interest in realist and qualitative methodologies.
Jenny’s background is in health psychology and public health research, having completed a PhD at the University of Edinburgh working closely with the national body Cycling Scotland to develop an intervention to support cycling to work. She has completed an MRC Career Development Fellowship, focussing on public engagement with medical research at the Social and Public Health Sciences Unit within Glasgow University. While taking a family career break, she also worked part-time as an Associate Tutor in the Institute for Education Community and Society at the University of Edinburgh.
Profile page: https://www.ed.ac.uk/profile/dr-jenny-van-bekkum
Email: jenny.vanbekkum@ed.ac.uk
Linked In: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/jenny-van-bekkum-phd-8a90b732
Nadine Seward (Chancellor’s Fellow)
Nadine is a Chancellor’s Fellow based in Clinical Psychology at the School for Health and Social Science. Nadine is interested in the co-design and evaluation of complex mental health programmes for scale-up in poorly resourced settings.
Prior to the Chancellor’s Fellow, Nadine worked as an Epidemiologist and Lecturer in Global Implementation Science at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London and held a post doc position at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the Department of Med Stats. Nadine obtained her PhD from UCL, Institute of Global Health in 2015.
Nadine’s research focuses on the design and evaluation of implementation research programmes to improve outcomes in global mental health. To achieve this, she uses a combination of causal inference and causal machine learning with implementation research methodologies. Nadine’s work is inherently interdisciplinary approach to her research with collaboration from social scientists, psychologists, psychiatrists, data scientists, and public health experts.
Although her Chancellor’s Fellowship will focus on developing and evaluating interventions to improve Maternal Mental Health, Nadine is also involved in other research programmes such as evaluating interventions to improve depression outcomes in older adults in Brazil (MRC – PROACTIVE). Nadine is also involved in two large NIRH Research and Innovation for Global Health (RIGHT) scheme including a programme to develop and evaluate a digital app to manage comorbid depression and heart disease in Argentina and Peru (COLMA), and the SPARK project: (SuPporting African communities to increase the Resilience and mental health of Kids with developmental disorders and their caregivers).
Email: nseward@ed.ac.uk
