Helen Roberts is a medical sociologist and Professor of Child Health Research at UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health. She was educated/trained in the universities of Reading, Aix-Marseille, Sussex and the Social Statistics Research Unit. She spent a decade in the third sector heading up R&D with the children's charity Barnardo's and a similar period on the board of NICE. Her research interests include the translation of research evidence into policy and practice across health, education and social care; inequalities in health (and what can be done about them) and the voice and legitimacy of the patient, service user and citizen. Her current research involves sustainability issues such as air quality as well as working on the longitudial qualitative element of the Born in Bradford study, and an NIHR funded study of children with mental health problems admitted to general paediatric wards. Internationally she has served on the Health Advisory Council and the Science Advisory Council with the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research in Canada and has reviewed research units in the UK, Canada and Australia. Despite modest research funding in the social sciences, her career to date has brought in over £1m as PI and around £15m as CI.
The majority of her teaching and learning activities involve working with doctoral students and postdocs. As someone who benefitted from state education and a grant to go to university at a time when a couple of university teachers could buy a house within walking distance of UCL, she believes that strengthening the career opportunities and work/life balance of early and mid-career colleagues is vital to the university's future.
She is on the Families Equalities and Diversity Committee at GOSH and as a long-term feminist, retains a keen interest in equalities issues.
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