I am a professor of Health Psychology at the University of Manchester and an HCPC registered Health Psychologist. Together with Prof Jo Hart, I lead the Health Workforce Group in the Division of Medical Education at University of Manchester. My research and practice are about translating health psychology to support behaviour change, with a focus on health worker behaviours. I am a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. I hold a Principal Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy and a Fellowship of the European Health Psychology Society, where I was previously Chair of the UN committee. I am co-founder of The Change Exchange, a collaborative of health psychology professionals who work to understand, drive and evaluate behaviour change within health partnerships between U.K. and low and middle- income country health organisations. In response to Covid-19, I co-founded The Health Psychology Exchange, a collaborative of health psychology professionals volunteering and working to support public health, health and care during covid. I have co-created translational behavioural science materials, such as The Cards for Change, which help people to learn about and use behaviour change techniques in their training or conversations. I supervise research in both undergraduate and postgraduate students.   I am Associate Dean for Internationalisation (Teaching & Learning) for the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health at University of Manchester. In this role, I develop and support partnerships between the University and other Universities worldwide. I am a co-investigator in Behavioural Research UK, the ESRC's leadership hub for behavioural research, led by Prof Linda Bauld and Prof Susan Michie. I was previously responsible for the behavioural and social sciences education of the undergraduate medical students at University  of Manchester. 

Born and brought up on the Wirral, I lived a lot of my adult life in Bristol before moving back to the Wirral in 2007.  I have worked both in healthcare settings, conducting research with patient groups in assessment and psychological therapies and in behavioural science applied to health professional practice change.  I work with health partnerships globally to coproduce applied research findings which are immediately useful to my collaborators. I am a proud sibling to three inspirational brothers, and am a proud wife and mother, with four children, a dog called River and a cat called Yoda.
 

I research interventions designed to change health professional behaviour (principally education and training). I have collaborated with NGOs e.g., Advanced Life Support Group, Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland, Tropical Health and Education Trust, as well as Health Education England and many other organisations, to co-create knowledge about what changes professional practice.

I co-lead, with Dr Jo Hart, The Change Exchange, a collaborative of health psychologists who work and volunteer in low and middle income countries to translate behavioural science for use in education and training programmes.  We have received funding from the Tropical Health and Education Trust and the Global Health Exhchange and from other organisations for this work.

I co-led, with Dr Jo Hart, a project which researched and developed ways of encouraging integrated working, role expansion and task shifting in the NHS.  We explored the process of practice change in new models of care and published two papers, four policy documents, our Cards for Change and elearning modules.

I co-led the MOVE project (Measuring the Outcomes of Volunteering for Education) with Professor Louise Ackers of the University of Salford.  My part of this Health Education England funded project, which ran for three years,  was to develop a core outcome set of the personal and professional development outcomes that are both desired by the NHS and possible in international placements and to create a psychometric tool to measure these outcomes.   A metasynthesis of literature and a Delphi approach developed a consensus on core outcomes. The outcome set was turned into a survey tool, which was piloted in over 400 healthcare professionals.  The final tool is a 40-item questionnaire, self-completion, which volunteers can use to create a profile of their personal and professional development in 10 key domains. I am in discussion with the Global Health Exchange, the international arm of Health Education England, about how the tool should be used to explore benefits to the NHS of international working.

I co-led (with Dr Jane Mooney) the Manchester Medical School mtechnology research group who investigated the pedagogical implications of new technologies in medical students, as we introduced iPads to our students from 2011.

I am past lead for behavioural and social sciences in the MBChB - and I maintain a particular interest in how these sciences can be made into practical interventions to help future doctors adopt psychological / social scientific approaches in their practice.

I am past lead for assessment in years 1 and 2 of the MBChB and I am current chair of the MBChB curriculum committee.

I am an academic advisor to students on the MBChB.

Dr Jo Hart

Professor Chris Armitage

Professor Marie Johnston

Professor Ged Byrne

Commonwealth Pharmacists Association

Full member of the Division of Health Psychology, British Psychological Society

HCPC registered Health Psychologist

Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences

Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Fellow of the European Health Psychology Society

Mixed methods

Scale development and testing

Systematic reviewing

BSc(Hons) Psychology University of Birmingham

MSc Health Psychology University of Bath

PhD Health Psychology University of Bristol