Marissa is a Dutch-Japanese student with a background in Psychology. She completed a BA in Liberal Arts and Sciences with a Major in Psychology and a Minor in Statistics at University College Utrecht in the Netherlands. This was followed by an MSc in Health Psychology (University of Bath) and an internship with the HealthTalk project at the Health Experiences Research Group (University of Oxford). Marissa’s work includes both qualitative and quantitative research. Her research interests include patient experiences of chronic illness, health inequalities, intervention implementation, and public health.
Category: Team-Research
This category is used to when creating a ‘Post’ that acts as as a profile page for a new member of the CLAHRC for the theme: Research partnership team
Caroline Katzer
Caroline has completed a BSc in Psychology at University of Mannheim in Germany and an MSc in Health Psychology at University of Surrey. Throughout her undergraduate degree in Mannheim she worked as a Research Assistant in the Judgement and Decision Making lab. She has experience in both qualitative and quantitative research methodology. Caroline’s research interests include the development of complex interventions, treatment and illness perceptions in chronically ill patients, adherence to treatment as well as behaviour change in general.
Ruth Plackett
Ruth’s PhD is exploring whether using new educational technologies, such as online simulation, can improve the teaching of clinical reasoning skills for medical students. Ruth, along with her supervisors and medical experts has developed an electronic clinical reasoning educational simulation tool (eCREST). ECREST shows patients in general practice, all patients presenting with vague, non-specific respiratory symptoms, which could be indicative of serious conditions that are often missed in primary, such as lung cancer. This will allow students to practise gathering information from a patient, interpret that information and make informed decisions on diagnosis and management. Ruth is currently conducting a feasibility randomised controlled trial at three medical schools, to see whether it can improve clinical reasoning skills, and a qualitative think aloud interview study, to explore how eCREST can help students to learn clinical reasoning skills. This PhD aims to improve future doctors’ awareness of the presentation of potentially serious conditions, such as lung cancer in primary care, to help reduce future diagnostic errors.
Dr Charlotte Woodhead
Charlotte completed her PhD at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, exploring the mental health of women in the UK Armed Forces. Her research and interests since then have focused on local health inequalities; for example, in sexual minority mental health; in the physical health of patients with serious mental illnesses; and, in the residential mobility of individuals with common mental disorders. Charlotte is currently a Research Associate working as an ‘embedded researcher’ within Haringey Council, as part of a research initiative organised by the NIHR CLAHRC North Thames to develop an evaluation framework for the provision of welfare advice hubs in primary care.
Thomas Steare
Tom works as a research assistant for the ARIES Study based at UCL Division of Psychiatry. He has experience of conducting research across Early Intervention Services for a wide range of studies led by Professor Sonia Johnson, where the goal has been to investigate new interventions for first-episode psychosis. His career also involved clinical work in a mental health team. Tom has a BSc in Psychology and an MSc in Clinical Mental Health Sciences.
Sachin Vadgama
Sachin is a Health Economist in the Department of Applied Health Research (DAHR) at UCL. He holds a Masters in International Health Policy and Health Economics from the London School of Economics and a Masters in Pharmacy from the University of Nottingham. Sachin has worked in the area of health economics since 2014 for multinational pharmaceutical companies, consultancies and academia. Prior to his appointment at UCL, Sachin was a Health Economist at QuintilesIMS, a health care consultancy. His primary focus was on performing health economic evaluation of novel treatments and devices, using economic modelling techniques in the areas of cancer and rheumatoid arthritis.
Sachin’s current research is evaluating the ‘real-world’ cost-effectiveness and adoption of novel innovation of interconnected devices such as wearable monitors, data analysis and ways of working which may help patients stay well and monitor their conditions themselves as part of the NHS innovation test bed of NE London.
Penny Rapaport
Penny is a Clinical Psychologist in the Division of Psychiatry at UCL. Her PhD focuses upon the development of an evidence-based manualised training intervention to reduce agitation in people with dementia living in care homes, identifying barriers and facilitators to developing and integrating interventions in care homes in order to increase their feasibility and acceptability.
Liz Simes
Liz is the Trial Coordinator for the i-THRIVE evaluation and is responsible for the coordination of the research project.
Liz has experience of quantitative and qualitative research, as well as research management and ethical governance in the NHS and criminal justice system. She has coordinated research trials funded by the NIHR evaluating services for young people with conduct disorder and adults with antisocial personality disorder. Liz has previously worked as a researcher working with hard to reach groups and is interested in developing evidence based practice for mental heath services for young people and adults. Liz has an MA in Criminology and Criminal Justice from King’s College London, and is currently undertaking a PhD at UCL exploring the concept of service users as researchers, and the potential impact of this approach on randomised control trials.
Bethan Morris
Bethan is a research assistant working on the i-THRIVE Evaluation and is involved in the development of research tools and data collection. She has experience of conducting research across mental health services where the aim was to discover mental health professionals’ assessment of patient activation in clinical practice and their receptiveness to a formal measure of patient activation. Her career has also involved working in inpatient settings. Bethan has a BSc in Psychology and an MSc in Mental Health Studies.
Meghan Davis
Meghan is a research assistant working on the i-THRIVE Evaluation. She has experience of conducting research on mental health in the Global South and has a strong interest in qualitative research as a tool for understanding how people access health services.
Meghan has a BSc in Behavioural Neuroscience as well as a Masters of Public Health.
