Dr Kostas Spyropoulos
Kostas joined the CHAD in July 2016 as a PhD Candidate researching the use of Technology to support behavioural change. His research interests derived from the Health Psychology’s spectrum such as addictive behaviours and behavioural change, screening and communicating health messages as well as health inequalities and Social Support. He has worked as a scientific consultant of several Greek Unions and Associations regarding the implementations of several European counseling programs focusing on issues of unemployment, equity and disability.
Sophia Fedorowicz
My interests are centred around experiences of mental distress and how people communicate those experiences; particularly in relation to policy and practice. The need to address the inequalities experienced by individuals living with mental distress has been the key motivator for my continuing professional and academic development. I am enthusiastic about public involvement in research and knowledge communication. I support CHAD projects as a research assistant by conducting data collection and qualitative analysis; recently working on projects about Women’s support services in Stoke-on-Trent and NHS Health Checks (for cardiovascular disease prevention). I also manage the CHAD twitter profile and blog.
I have a BSc in Psychology and an MSc in Applied Research both from Staffordshire University and I began my PhD with the Centre of Health and Development in 2019. My research focuses on experiences of suicide risk assessments in primary care settings. This involves working with experts by experience, both health care practitioners and people who have accessed care and experienced the assessments, to shape the projects and to bring their perspective into the development of guidelines for improvements.
Patricia Darcy
Trish is a part-time researcher with CHAD. Her research interests include natural environments and health, health inequalities, Public and Patient Involvement (PPI). She has a MSc in Health Psychology and is presently undertaking a PhD in Natural Environments and Health in Staffordshire University. Her PhD is focusing on the therapeutic effects of natural environments, specifically how natural environments and nature-based interventions can be used to support people living with long-term conditions. The contribution of her PhD will be to examine the positive effects of natural environments by testing types of exposures and measures that have not yet been investigated. Trish works in partnership with people with a lived experience of chronic pain conditions to inform her research.
Sian Parry
Sian re-joined CHAD in April 2021 as a PhD student. She is researching employer engagement in education through an evaluation of a secondary-school careers-based intervention of students from more disadvantaged areas. With a background in secondary mathematics teaching and a qualification in public health, she holds a research interest in the education, health, and wellbeing of children and young people.
Previously working as a part-time research assistant with CHAD, Sian was involved with projects about emotional wellbeing in children, self-harm, hospital discharge of people experiencing homelessness and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).
Anne Biro
Anne Biro is a Canadian nurse who is interested in understanding differences & similarities in nursing culture and practice among different countries. Her interest in this topic was piqued by two main observations as a result of living in Mongolia:
- foreign nursing consultants and educators tend to teach from their own knowledge and experience, but often what they propose or teach doesn’t seem to connect to local nursing practice, and
- while it is easy to translate nursing terms, conveying concepts behind those terms is difficult if there are different perceptions of what those terms mean.
To gain insight into these observations, Anne is conducting an ethnographic study on the roles and responsibilities of Mongolian nurses. Using a combination of field observations and interviews to develop a description of Mongolian nursing responsibilities in medical-surgical wards, she plans to compare these to what has been published about nursing in other countries.
Ideh Kont
My name is Ideh Kont, I work in the University Hospital of North Midlands. Currently I am a first year MPHIl/PHD student and working on digital technology supporting patients living with adrenal incidentaloma.
Gauge patients (and their families/carers) views on what concerns they have when newly diagnosed.
Provide support of other clinician’s responses to these questions and then phrase it in lay language with the aid of patient representative and their carers.
Explore digital tools to allow this information to be accessible to the patients.
Explore the option of developing interactive facility to allow patients to ask questions. These questions with me made on an ongoing basis. This will ensure that our resources are always updated with any new queries.
Study the impact of this new digital platform intervention on patient experience and whether it will reduce anxiety and stress, and thereby enhance the quality of life, until a definitive diagnosis is achieved.
Hezron Ottey
Hi my name is Hezron Ottey, and I am a second year PhD student looking at the role of faith-based organisation in health promotion and health education, more specifically related to Physical activity or exercise. I completed my BSc degree in adult Nursing in 2012 at Staffordshire University and my PGCE in Medical Education at Keele University in 2020.
Faith-based organisations are unique hubs for lifestyle changes both among congregants and the wider community, influencing the motivation to live healthier lifestyles. My research will thus examine the relationship between The Seventh day Adventist (SDA)religious beliefs, values, practice and physical activity or exercise.
To do this I am currently exploring the perspectives of the clergy/pastor, general members, and health leaders within the SDA denomination, which also has a unique health message connected to its doctrinal teachings and identity.
This study will contribute to the field of knowledge by highlighting the religious influence, motivation, or demotivation relative to physical activity behaviour or exercise among Seventh day Adventists.
Mary Williams
I am currently working as a Social Care Pathway Manager with Midlands Partnership Foundation Trust. My specific area of interest is in Adult Mental Health and my area of work is South Staffordshire.
I aim to apply a new perspective to the analysis of assessment and care planning that leads to admission by looking at the Power, Threat, Meaning Model (Johnstone and Boyle 2018) as the focus of my PHD so I can see what was happening to the person at the time they were admitted as opposed to what was wrong with them. I hope that this will lead to learning for me and for the Social Care Pathway.
Anthony Bruner
Anthony is originally from Seattle, Washington in the United States and has been a social worker since 2002. He has practiced in the United States, New Zealand and UK working with children and families, foster children, military families, veterans and children in acute mental health crisis. His primary research is around how social workers engage with mental health concepts and the general interaction between social work and mental health in the UK. Anthony is a social work lecturer at Staffordshire University.
Claudia Lega
Claudia Lega is a lecturer at University of Lincoln and PhD student at Staffordshire University. Her interests are natural environments, cognitive functioning, and stress.
Her PhD consisted of three studies evaluating effects of exposure to natural environments on cognitive functioning and stress. Measures included the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (as a measure of neighbourhood greenness), computerised attention and memory tasks, heart rate, pupil size and hair cortisol concentration.
Karen Landmann
I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker ( LCSW– psychotherapist) in private practice in New York City. I was educated at Columbia University and St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD. I specialize in trauma and was a 9/11 and COVID-19 mental health first responder. I plan to conduct my research on COVID-19 medical first responders.
I will be exploring to what degree spirituality mitigates the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) response in this population. I will be using quantitative methods and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (“IPA”: “meaning-making”). I hope to make my findings generalizable to other first responder populations and the field of Crisis Intervention as a whole.
Dr Lorna Sams
Lorna runs her own business as a personal trainer. Her specialist interest lies in the management of chronic pain through the participation in exercise. She is a strong believer in both the physiological and psychological benefits of exercise.
Lorna holds a MSc in Applied Sport an Exercise Science (Staffordshire University) and is currently a PhD student investigating the effect of integrating percussive therapy into warm ups of strength and conditioning programmes to improve experiences of chronic non-specific musculoskeletal pain in knees, lumbar spine and shoulders.
Lorna has been involved with a number of research projects relating to physical activity and mental health, pregnancy and new mums, and green space and health