Interdisciplinary Research in Health Sciences (IRIHS)

Oxford Tobacco Addiction Group                         

I am a supervisor and provide pastoral care to students on the MSc in Translational Health Sciences, MSc in Evidence-Based Health Care and DPhil in Primary Health Care programmes.

My current DPhil students are carrying out research on the relationship between smoking cessation and recurrence of cardiovascular disease and mental health outcomes, and the cultural tailoring of smoking cessation interventions. I also supervise Medical School undergraduate and postgraduate student projects.

I am Deputy Course Director of the Translational Health Sciences MSc programme and a mixed-methods research lecturer. My interests lie in tobacco addiction and smoking cessation interventions, and I have expertise in developing and delivering randomised controlled trials and conducting evidence syntheses. 

My research focuses on the delivery and evaluation of brief interventions and pharmacotherapies for smoking cessation in primary care. Although there are effective treatments to help smokers stop smoking, many are unwilling or unable to quit. My goal is to develop novel and effective ways of delivering brief interventions for smoking cessation and identify ways in which we can improve communication between patients and practitioners.  

I am currrently co-PI of TRIDENT, an NIHR funded Programme Grant that is testing and evaluating a brief e-cigarette offer and a continued support programme delivered by mental health professionals for people with serious mental illness (SMI) who smoke and have declined help to quit.

I am also involved in a number of evidence synthesis projects, including:

• A living Cochrane systematic review and evidence gap map on Electronic Cigarettes for Smoking Cessation
• A systematic review and evidence gap map on e-cigarette use and subsequent cigarette smoking in young people
• A living systematic review and evidence gap map on interventions for vaping cessation 

I was awarded a PhD in Primary Health Care Sciences in 2014 from the University of Birmingham, which was funded by an NIHR doctoral fellowship to examine novel approaches to smoking cessation (attentional retraining for attentional bias in smokers). 

In 2016 I was awarded an NIHR postdoctoral fellowship to lead a programme of work examining the effectiveness of GPs and nurses giving brief advice and offering an e-cigarette to smokers with chronic illnesses who were unwilling to stop smoking. I led a randomised controlled trial (the MaSC study) comparing the intervention with usual care, alongside an embedded qualitative interview study exploring patients’ and practitioners’ perspectives, and a conversation analysis study of recorded consultations to understand how the brief intervention was delivered and received.