KING'S IMPROVEMENT SCIENCE - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Senior Projects Officer, King's Improvement Science, King 's College London
Barbora joined the King's Improvement Science team in January 2017.
Barbora works on projects that span improvement and implementation science, quality improvement, and evaluation. She also teaches on the Qualitative Research Methods and Quality Improvement undergraduate courses for medical students.
Prior to joining KIS, Barbora worked in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford and at the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families in London. She is interested in applied health research and in developing novel ways to bridge the research-to-practice divide.
Barbora completed her BSc in Psychology and MSc in Psychological Research Methods at Birkbeck, University of London.
Research interests
Improvement and implementation science
Applied health research
Job Titles:
- Public Involvement Member / See Profile
Chris is a former patient, carer and a regular PPI member with an interest in bringing in the patient and carer voice to health and care research.
Job Titles:
- Senior Health Economist, King's Improvement Science, King 's College London
After working at the Institute of Psychiatry & Neuroscience, King's College London, and then at LSE, where he obtained his PhD,
Andy spent eight years in the civil service as a government economic advisor before returning to King's College London in 2014. His area of expertise is in health economics, including economic evaluation of health programmes and technologies.
Job Titles:
- Research Associate, King's Improvement Science, King 's College London
Kathryn joined KIS in 2021. She is passionate about applied health research, mental health and the value of lived experience.
She has a background in clinical medicine and worked as a GP specialist trainee until 2018. She also holds a BSc in immunity and infection and a PhD in microbiology from Imperial College London.
Prior to joining KIS, Kathryn worked as a researcher at Solent University on a mental health and heritage project, in research communications at the McPin Foundation and as a peer support tutor at City and Hackney Recovery College.
She also successfully created and launched an illustrated mental health toolkit via Kickstarter in 2021 for both people with lived experience of mental health issues and health professionals.
Research interests
Applied health research
Mental health
Peer research
Patient and public involvement in research
Job Titles:
- Lecturer in Applied Health Statistics, King 's College London
- Research Interests
Kia-Chong is a lecturer in applied health statistics, based at the Centre for Implementation Science, King's College London.
He is a researcher-in-residence at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, providing statistical leadership and support for quality improvement.
He has an academic background in psychology and sociology and a PhD in health service and population research. His research interests focus on applying item response theory and structural equation modelling methodologies to address concomitant psychometric issues in longitudinal data analysis.
Research interests
Latent variable modelling
Psychometrics
Life course epidemiology
Teaching
Course Director, MSc Implementation and Improvement Science
Module Lead, Measurement in Mental Health (MSc Global Mental Health)
Theme Lead, KCL Centre for Doctoral Training in Data-Driven Health
Louise is Deputy Director of the Centre for Implementation Science at King's College London.
She is also NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) South London's implementation research theme lead.
Louise trained as a psychologist and completed a PhD in patient safety at Imperial College London. Her expertise and research interests are in implementation science, improvement science and patient safety.
Over the past 10 years, Louise has led the development and validation of numerous non-technical and teamwork assessment tools for use in healthcare. Most recently, her research has focused on developing tools to improve the conceptual and methodological quality of implementation and improvement research.
Research interests
Implementation science (research and practice)
Improvement science
Patient safety
Teaching
Implementation science
Improvement science
Patient safety
Expertise and public engagement
Job Titles:
- Research Fellow, King's Improvement Science, King 's College London
Manuela Russo joined the King's Improvement Science (KIS) team in March 2022 as a research fellow. Her background is in psychosis and neurocognition, and implementation of psychosocial intervention for psychosis in low- and middle-income countries.
Before joining the KIS team, Manuela worked as project manager/research fellow at the Unit of Social and Community Psychiatry, Queen Mary University of London, for a large EC-funded multisite effectiveness-implementation project in the Balkans.
Her postdoctoral appointments includes both national (Department of Psychosis at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), King's College London) and international experience (Department of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA) during which she gained expertise in coordinating trials in schizophrenia, better understanding of bipolar disorder, and neurocognitive profiles.
Manuela obtained her PhD in psychosis in 2012 at the IoPPN with a thesis on symptom dimensions in first episode psychosis and associated neurocognitive functioning. Prior to her PhD, Manuela was a visiting researcher at the IoPPN and a trainee in clinical psychologist at the University of Palermo, Italy.
Research interests
Psychosis
Neurocognition
Psychosocial intervention
Implementation science
Erin joined King's in September 2023, this is her first post in an academic institution, having spent over 20 years working in the voluntary sector as a youth worker and community development worker. Her most recent role was at a local Healthwatch in south London, helping patients and the public to have their say on how health and care services in their area are run, and acting in the role of ‘critical friend' to NHS and social care colleagues to help them interface with services users, carers and their local populations in the most fair and productive way possible.
Erin gained her Masters in Applied Anthropology, Community and Youth Work at Goldsmiths College (University of London) in 2013 which covered anthropological research methods as well as community work praxis. Her BA was in Design for performance from Wimbledon College of Art (University of the Arts London).
Helen has been involved with KIS since 2015, contributing to various forums, events, projects, reports and operational team meetings. Helen is a former nurse with specialist experience in community health, in the UK and overseas. Like many who become involved in PPI work, it is as a result of personal incidents that she became involved in opportunities to improve services to benefit identified needs. Helen has a ‘Library of Lived Experiences' to draw from being deaf, a patient and a carer enabling her to share insights and mixed skills in NHS PPI initiatives and with other health and educational organisations. She has a particular interest in co-partnership and co-productive working, inclusive accessible communication, including digital health, and remote consultations and current research projects for improving public health.
Hema's professional involvement and interest has been focused on health psychology and health services research; particularly the impact and involvement of patients and the public in designing and prioritising research projects to improve the quality and focus of research, using participatory research methods. Her recent focus involves applying these interests to the area of rheumatology during both her PhD (2017-2023) and MSc (2016-2017) at King's College London. This research explored persistent symptoms and/or inflammation despite treatment in adult-onset and juvenile onset inflammatory arthritis.
Hema is broadly interested in involving patients and the public across conditions and age groups in health services research and public engagement activities. She believes that involving patients and the public should be at the core of all research and it is particularly vital in the implementation and improvement stages.
Research interests
Patient and public involvement
Health psychology
Health services research
Rheumatology - adult and juvenile onset inflammatory arthritis
Teaching
iBSc Psychology (Research Methods)
BSc Psychology
Expertise and public engagement
Jo joined the KIS team in December 2022 and is a patient expert on the patient preferences and experiences of waiting for heart surgery research project. Although she lives in Somerset, Jo accesses services at the Royal Brompton Hospital, London.
Prior to a significant life-changing event, Jo has mainly worked within education, housing and support services.
Jo has lived experience of various health conditions - her own and family members. After being diagnosed with leukaemia in 2010 Jo has been keen to take part in clinical trials and other research which will hopefully bring future benefits for others. Jo firmly believes that it is essential for organisations to work together fully with the users of the services to ensure the best outcomes for everyone, and especially for the service users themselves.
Jo is also involved as an ambassador for a blood cancer charity and as a co-producer with Turn 2 Us.
Job Titles:
- Public Involvement Member / See Profile
In 2011, after a career lasting 31 years, John retired from the NHS as a Director of Health Informatics for a Primary Care Group (formally Croydon Health Authority).
He remains committed to the NHS and the way services are delivered. In 2015 he became involved with the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King's College London working as a lay member on the team examining addiction services. This led to a PPI role in the department. Since then, John has become involved in projects covering a wide variety of services. He is currently involved in the PPI work at King's Improvement Science, specifically around aspects of research methods and the implementation of new ways of working.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Medicines
- Public Involvement Member / See Profile
Josephine has provided operational and strategic patient and public engagement and involvement guidance to multiple clinical, policy, regulatory and academic stakeholders for over ten years. She is a long-standing patient member of King's Improvement Science (KIS) at King's College London working on various projects including the co-production of departmental patient and public involvement guidelines, mentoring early career researchers and working on quality improvement (QI) projects including urology surgery training and a pre-surgery app. Elsewhere in academia she sits on clinical trial steering committees for digital health innovations and a mixed-methods project researching patient and clinician acceptability of AI in health.
Research interests
Josephine has lived in South East London for over 20 years and is, or has been a patient/service user of multiple King's Health Partners Trusts. She volunteers on a local community farm and has supported older age adults with dual diagnoses of severe and enduring mental health disorders and dementia. She was previously a facilitator for IMPARTS Mind and Body Programme where she first developed a research interest in the benefits of digital health interventions, but also the challenges of implementation.
At a national level Josephine is a lay member of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority's (MHRA) Interim Devices Working Group and Expert Advisory Group for Artificial Intelligence, Software and Apps. She is lead panel assessor (patient) for the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR) Artificial Intelligence (A4i), Invention for Innovation and Small Business Research Initiative awards.
Previously Josephine was a lay member of the NHS Valproate Safety Implementation Group concerned with monitoring impact, compliance and patient outcomes of pharmaceutical regulation, a patient-representative advisor on a European Medicines Agency's (EMA) Pharmaceutical Risk Assessment Committee (PRAC) and the International Urogynaecological Association's (IUGA) Patient Advisory Council.
Josephine is currently completing an MSc in Medicine, Health and Public Policy at King's College London and is a fellow of The European Patients' Academy on Therapeutic Innovation (EUPATI).
Job Titles:
- Research Associate, King's Improvement Science, King 's College London
Katie completed a PhD at King's College London in 2022. Her PhD involved evaluating the implementation and effectiveness of an early intervention service model for eating disorders during national scaling of the model in the UK.
Before her PhD, Katie was a research assistant for the Mental Health Research Network in Scotland for four years. In this post, she worked across a portfolio of mental health studies, including evaluating risk and resilience for psychosis, a nursing intervention for epilepsy and intellectual disabilities, and investigating visual processing in neurodevelopmental disorders. Alongside her research assistant post, she completed a part-time Master's in human cognitive neuropsychology at the University of Edinburgh. Prior to the research assistant post, Katie obtained a bachelor's degree in applied psychology with clinical psychology from the University of Kent.
Research interests
Implementation science
Early intervention in mental health
Eating disorders
Mental health service research
Job Titles:
- Research Coordinator
- Admin & Communications / Research Coordinator
Madelene's role as research coordinator involves supporting various research projects, mainly the King's Improvement Science (KIS) programme and the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration South London (ARC South London). This includes finance support, HR support, internal/external event coordination as well as overall administrative support to the research group. Madelene completed her degree in Psychology and Politics from The University of Otago, New Zealand.
Melanie is one of the founders and trustee of a service user led charity, Aurora Project based in south London.
Melanie has lived experience of accessing a range of services and has since utilised her lived experience to support and take part in service user involvement since 2010.
Melanie is part of the King's Service User Research Group (SURG) and has worked with researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IOPPN) on a number of projects since 2013 including the SURE recovery App. With a keen personal interest in research, Melanie joined the piloted PPI role embedded with KIS Team meetings since January 2021, and has taken part in a project level PPI role also with Kings Improvement Science on the rapid review of remote access to services during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Job Titles:
- Admin & Communications / Communications Manager, King 's College London
- Communications Manager at NIHR Applied Research Collaboration
- Communications Manager, King 's College London
Michele is a communications manager at NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) South London, where she job shares with Nick Sarson.
Job Titles:
- Admin & Communications / Communications Manager, King 's College London
- Communications Manager at NIHR Applied Research Collaboration
- Communications Manager, King 's College London
Nick is a communications manager at NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) South London, where he job shares with Michele Harris-Tafri.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Community Psychiatry, King 's College London and Director of the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration ( ARC ) South London
Job Titles:
- Director, King 's Improvement Science
Zoë has over 30 years of NHS experience, spanning roles in clinical delivery, general management, strategy, and leadership in research and innovation.
She has been working for 20 years in south London at the interface of health and care and academia, with roles in King's Health Partners, the Health Innovation Network (as a director and interim chief executive for two years) and the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) South London, where she is currently joint deputy director of the ARC. She has worked with the mental health trusts and integrated care systems across south London, and is a Trustee of Age UK Sutton.
Zoë has a degree in experimental psychology from the University of Cambridge and an MBA. She is passionate about real-world implementation and evaluation of evidence-based practice.