Katherine Woolf is a Professor of Medical Education Research at UCL. Her work to better understand and address inequity and discrimination in medical education has led to widespread policy change.
In the UK, the training of doctors is intrinsically linked to the NHS, shaping who enters and stays in the workforce and ultimately how patients experience care. This connection underpins all of Professor Katherine’s Woolf’s work to tackle inequalities in medical education.
Selection into medical school is crucial to who we end up with in the NHS. For me, medical education is understanding why people go into medicine in the first place and the barriers to entry and progression. We have a shortage of doctors in the UK, so this work is more important than ever.
Kath’s move into medical education was accidental. A recent psychology graduate, she cold-emailed every psychology department in London until her message was finally forwarded to the UCL Medical School. She was offered a research assistant post under Professor Dame Jane Dacre, who championed her development and encouraged her to pursue a PhD in psychology and medical education, which she completed in 2009.
Kath’s research has exposed persistent awarding gaps - known as differential attainment - among ethnic minority students and challenged long‑held assumptions that these disparities stemmed from students’ backgrounds or abilities. Through talking to teachers and students, she discovered that what made the most difference was the social environment.
The social environment - students’ relationships with their peers, teachers and parents - is essential to learning. We found there was a lot of racism and negative stereotypes that were getting in the way of ethnic minority students forming good social relationships. It isn’t a problem students need to fix, it’s institutional.
This was a significant finding. At the time, organisations didn’t know, or didn’t want to know, why these inequalities existed. Kath’s findings have influenced the General Medical Council, Royal Colleges, and medical schools across the UK, contributing to policy shifts and sector‑wide commitments to eliminate differential attainments.
Kath is also a leading voice in widening participation. Off the back of her work with charity the Sutton Trust, the UK government has committed to expanding medical school places for students from under-represented socioeconomic backgrounds. During COVID‑19, she co‑led University of Leicester study UK‑REACH, one of the world’s largest cohort studies of healthcare workers, generating vital evidence on infection risk, PPE access, vaccine hesitancy, and workforce wellbeing, particularly among ethnic minority and migrant staff.
A mother of 12-year-old twins Kath is grateful to her UCL community for “supporting her to have a happy family life and maintain balance.” She is also a dedicated mentor, championing early‑career researchers and advocating for more inclusive pathways into medical education research.
For 20 years, Kath has been committed to making medical education fairer and more reflective of the diverse communities it serves. She can’t imagine doing this anywhere else.
UCL is the only institution where I could work across medical education, psychology, inequalities research, and policy without constraint. We’ve got everyone and almost all subjects here, it’s one of the many reasons I’ve stayed here for so long.
