Kami's PhD Placement with the RH-PRU

Kami is a PhD student on the Medical Research Council funded Doctoral Training Programme (MRC-DTP), and she joined the RH-PRU for her first 12-week rotation. During her rotation she worked on designing a study to answer a responsive request about attitudes and experiences of contraception in the UK. She has written a short blog post sharing her experiences working with the team…

During my first rotation on the MRC-DTP, I worked with Professor Jenny Hall (RH-PRU Co-Director) and Dr Rose Stevens (RH-PRU Research Fellow) on a contraception project. I came into this programme with a strong background in psychology, but I had no experience working directly in reproductive health or policy research, so I was really excited to learn more about the inner workings of a policy research unit and reproductive health research.

Given what we know about the increased dependence on online resources for health information, we decided to explore the influence of social media on decision making related to contraception. I had no previous experience of working with social media data, so the first half of my rotation involved lots of literature searching and building on my understanding of what was possible in the realm of social media data methodologies. I also reached out to people within my personal interdisciplinary network to complement what I had learned from the literature with real world experience of using data from social media. This exposed me to invaluable insight about the logistics and complexities of using social media data, particularly in the context of health information. 

After several weeks of learning and discussing my endless discoveries with my supervisors, my novel expertise allowed me to support in the design of a two-phase mixed methods study which pushes methodological boundaries to answer critical questions about the role of social media in contraception experiences. The development of this study protocol was the result of collaboration across the RH-PRU, as I presented my work to the wider RH-PRU, beyond my main supervision team, to receive feedback that could be implemented into further iterations of the design. This study will continue to be developed by the RH-PRU following the completion of my rotation and hopefully will be carried out in the summer of 2025. 

Overall, my experience working with the RH-PRU was incredibly enriching and informative. I have come away from this 12-week placement with so much more knowledge about policy research and how we liaise with the government to conduct research that will ultimately inform policy and improve population health. I am also leaving this placement feeling more confident in my ability to design a study from scratch using novel methods in a new research area. I hope to continue learning about the reproductive health field throughout my year of rotations and during the rest of my PhD!