People

Richard Watt is Professor of Dental Public Health in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, UCL and Director of Research for Central North West London NHS Foundation Trust. 

Yvonne Kelly is a Professor of Lifecourse Epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health UCL. She is Director of the ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies in Society and Health (ICLS) and Director of the ESRC-BBSRC Soc-B Centre for Doctoral Training in Biosocial Research. Yvonne jointly leads teaching on the Social Determinants of Health for the undergraduate Population Health programme, and teaches on the Masters degree Social Epidemiology course. Her main research areas are on health and development during childhood and adolescence - of particular interest are: the causes and consequences of social and ethnic inequalities; the ways in which familial and broader social contextual influences combine to shape health and development; the uptake and retention of health related behaviours during late childhood and adolescence; the links between early life exposures e.g. drinking and smoking in pregnancy; birthweight and infant feeding and later health and development. To do this work she makes use of longitudinal datasets including the Millennium Cohort Study, the UK Household Longitudinal Study, the 1958 and 1970 Birth Cohort Studies.

Professor Stephen Morris is Professor of Health Services Research at the University of Cambridge. He is an experienced health economist. Currently, he leads the Cambridge Research Methods Hub, is co-director of the Cambridge Centre for Health Services Research, and is Deputy Director of the Cambridge Primary Care Unit. 

Mike Crawford is Professor of Mental Health Research in the Centre for Psychiatry at Imperial College London and an Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust.

His research is on the development and evaluation of complex interventions for people with poor mental health. Current projects include randomised trials of psychological and pharmacological interventions for people with psychosis and personality disorder.

Professor Paul Ramchandani is LEGO® Professor of Play in Education, Development and Learning at Cambridge University.

Dr Saffron Karlsen is a Senior Lecturer in Social Research at the University of Bristol. Her work aims to enable a better understanding of the different ways in which ethnicity has meaning and relevance in people's lives, both for developing awareness of potential group affiliations and as a driver of health and other inequalities. It engages particularly with the negative impact of forms of racist victimisation on these processes.

Dr Timothy Weaver is a Social Scientist at Middlesex University with over 25 years' experience of health services research in a range of settings.

Dr Anja Heilmann is a Clinical Lecturer in Dental Public Health in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, UCL.

Mr Jabeer Butt is CEO of the Race Equality Foundation. He has gained an international reputation for the use of evidence in developing interventions that help overcome discrimination and disadvantage.

Karlet is a Senior Assessment Coordinator for IAPT services at The Big Life Group - Self Help Services and is involved in the Together Study sharing her expertise in parenting intervention. She offers support by working with those in ‘hard to reach’ youth and families in the community communities.

With a keen interested in Mental Health and Youth Work, she is passionate about the education to prison pipeline for young people and was involved in the creation of a registered charity called G.R.E.A.T (Grass Root Educational Academy for Transformation), supporting African & Caribbean families with a particular focus on families with children with Special Educational Needs (SEN) or Educational Health Care Plans (EHCP).

Karlet has gained experience through her involvement in research studies by Health Commissioning Groups and Service Steering groups. She is an advocate for social change and is regularly engaged with the broader work of the Race Equality Foundation.

Annemarie is a Research Fellow on the Together study at UCL. Her interests are in supporting positive family functioning and child outcomes, in particular for vulnerable families. Annemarie completed her PhD in psychology (University of Bedfordshire) developing and evaluating a mental health intervention for parents of autistic children. Her previous experience include working with parents and young children to examine the social and psychological factors affecting mental health and family outcomes.

Hana currently works as a Trial manager on TOGETHER, a NIHR-funded trial assessing the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of ‘Strengthening families, strengthening communities’, a community led parenting programme for disadvantaged families. Her previous experience include development and evaluation of interventions for people with psychosis/severe mental health. Hana completed her PhD in Psychology (Bangor University) examining psychological vulnerability factors for bipolar disorder in biological children of parents diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Nicola Westbrook is a Research Assistant at UCL.  Her background is in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Nursing and she is also qualified as a Specialist Community Public Health School Nurse.  More broadly her interests are in the development of Early Intervention and prevention strategies that support and improve young people’s outcomes at an individual and community level.

Dr Donna Clutterbuck is a Research Assistant at the Race Equality Foundation. Her background is in domestic violence research. More broadly, her research interests centre upon advancing social policies that promote equal rights and inclusion, as well as improving outcomes for young people.

Ms Leandra Box is the SFSC Programme Manager at the Race Equality Foundation and manages the Strengthening Families, Strengthening Communities Team. She worked jointly with Jabeer Butt in the development of the SFSC model for use with black and minority ethnic communities in the UK, and has taken forward its establishment as a widely used parenting intervention.

Dr Andrew Brand is the lead for the Research Design Conduct Service for North and Mid Wales, who works at the NWORTH Clinical Trials Unit as a Trial Statistician. He has a background in psychology and software development and has published papers on the accuracy and the precision of effect size estimates and issues related to statistical inference.

Renato Venturelli works as a Research Assistant for the Dental Public Health Research group at UCL.  He graduated as a dentist from the University of Concepcion, Chile  and holds an MSc in Dental Public Health from UCL.

Naomi works for the NIHR Clinical Research Network (CRN) as a clinical studies officer. Naomi is supporting the Together research study in helping with the recruitment of families and undertaking research interviews. Naomi’s experience over the past 15 years has primarily been in mental health services, in clinical and research roles. She has worked for the CRN for 9 years supporting a variety of large scale NIHR approved research studies. Naomi has a keen interest in supporting this study which is looking at the wellbeing of parents and children.

Michelle is a part-time Research Assistant for the Dental Public Health group, and works part-time as a clinical dentist for Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust.

Michelle graduated as a dentist from the University of Bristol. She has mainly worked within Community Dental Services across England, providing treatment for special care and paediatric patients. She completed her Membership of the Faculty of Dental Surgeons examinations at the Royal College of Surgeons Edinburgh, and holds a Masters in Dental Public Health from UCL.

Beverley Thompson is a Research Assistant on the Together Study at UCL. Her background is in Children and Family work and over the last 20 years as a Parent Programme & Training Officer she has been involved in the delivery, training and quality assurance of ‘Strengthening Families, Strengthening Communities’, a community led parenting programme for disadvantaged families. During her time working at the Race Equality Foundation Beverley was instrumental in the development of the SFSC Easy Words and Pictures Manual for parents with learning disabilities.

More broadly her interests are in the development of Early Intervention and prevention strategies that support and improve outcomes for Parents and Families as well as supporting Facilitators in the delivery of SFSC.

Jess is a Research Assistant on the Together Project. Her background is in psychology, having completed an MSc in Research and Clinical Psychology in 2014. Jess has experience assisting Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs), which compared Vitamin D supplementation to a placebo control in a population of individuals with First Episode Psychosis, and evaluated the efficacy of a lifestyle education programme, which aimed to improve the physical and mental health of those with severe mental illnesses. Most recently, Jess worked on the Process Evaluation of the ODDESSI project, which evaluated the implementation of the Finnish ‘Open Dialogue’ Model in an NHS system. Jess is interested in the impact of formative experience and the prevention of mental illness and health inequalities.