Leicestershire Healthcare Inequalities Improvement Doctoral Training Programme
Our team
Programme team
Programme Director
Professor Sally Singh is the Head of Pulmonary and Cardiac Rehabilitation at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, with roles at the University of Leicester’s Department of Respiratory Sciences and Coventry University’s School of Physiotherapy.
Her research specialisms include pulmonary rehabilitation and digital interventions to support rehabilitation and recovery. Alongside the team from University Hospitals of Leicester NHS, Professor Singh has been working with national clinical leaders to build the ground breaking ‘Your Covid Recovery’ online service and is now working with the NHS nationally to roll it out across the country.
As well as being a member of the World Health Organisation’s Development Group for COPD rehabilitation programme Professor Singh is the clinical lead for the National Asthma and COPD Audit Programme and the British Thoracic Society’s survey of health care professionals’ opinions of the role and adaptations required for pulmonary rehabilitation for COVID-19 patients.
Co-director
Professor McCann is a renowned expert in cardiac MRI and immediate past chair of the British Society of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Research Group and is the Cardiovascular lead for the NIHR Leicester Biomedical Research Centre . His research spans the breadth of biomarker discovery, through early phase clinical trials and international phase III studies. His research interests include the use of novel CMR sequences in the study of cardiovascular diseases, with a particular focus on coronary disease, diabetic cardiomyopathy and aortic stenosis.
He is also NIHR Cardiovascular lead for the East Midlands, sits on the Wellcome Trust Expert Review Group (physiology in health and disease) and previously on the NIHR doctoral fellowships panel (2017-2020) and was on the BHF Fellowships Committee (2015-18). He leads the imaging biomarker discovery research and evaluations of novel cardiovascular interventions and the mentorship programme for the Department and BHF Accelerator Award.
Co-director
Dr Claire Lawson
Dr Lawson is a nurse data scientist, Associate Professor and Advanced NIHR fellow working across Cardiovascular Sciences and the Real World Evidence Unit, University of Leicester. Her research programme funded by Florence Nightingale Trust, NIHR, Wellcome Trust and BHF focuses on three themes: (i) heart failure and comorbidity epidemiology, (ii) patient reported outcome measures and (iii) health informatics and education.
Co-director
Professor Brightling is a National Institute for Health Research Senior Investigator, Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, Respiratory Theme Lead for Leicester NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, Director Institute for Lung Health and Honorary Consultant Respiratory Physician.
He is the founding Director of the European Respiratory Society Clinical Research Collaborations, Chair-elect of the ERS Science Council and Director of the NIHR Translational Research Collaboration.
His research focuses on improving the clinical management and understanding the immunopathogenesis of the airway diseases asthma, chronic cough and COPD.
Co-director
Professor Barratt leads the Renal Research Group.
He is the IGA nephropathy Rare Disease Group lead for the UK National Registry of Rare Kidney Diseases (RaDaR) and a member of the steering committee for the International IgA Nephropathy Network. He is an Editorial Board member for Kidney International and Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology and sits on the Kidney Research UK Grants committee. He is also Head of the Postgraduate Speciality School of Clinical Academic Training, Health Education East Midlands.
Co-director
Professor Khunti is Professor of Primary Care Diabetes and Vascular Medicine at the University of Leicester. He is Co-Director of the Leicester Diabetes Centre and leads a research group that is currently working on the early identification of, and interventions with, people who have cardiometabolic disease or are at increased risk of developing cardiometabolic diseases including multimorbidity.
Professor Khunti is also Director of the UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) in Applied Research Collaborations (ARC) East Midlands and Director of The Real World Evidence Unit and The Centre for Ethnic Health Research
Co-director
Professor Brown is part of the Department of Cancer Studies at the University of Leicester. She’s using lab research and clinical trials to explore whether certain components of food could help fight cancer.
Professor Brown is Co-chair of the UK Therapeutic Cancer Prevention Network Group. By uniting a range of scientific and clinical expertise and research teams across the UK, the group aims to progress research on the prevention of cancer and develop clinical trials that can translate this work into benefits for people.
Co-director
Professor Amanda Daley is a Professor of Behavioural Medicine at the University of Loughborough and an NIHR Research Professor in Public Health. Amanda is also the Director of the Centre for Lifestyle Medicine and Behaviour (CLiMB). Her work is focused on investigating the effects of lifestyle interventions on health outcomes. She has a particular interest in testing lifestyle interventions that can be delivered by health care professionals within routine NHS consultations.
Co-director
Professor Stensel is a Professor of Exercise Metabolism at Loughborough University and is also the Associate Dean for Research at Loughborough's School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences.
His research focuses on exploring the themes of physical activity and health, and of the effects of exercise on appetite regulation, cardiovascular diseases risk, lipoprotein metabolism, and on factors affecting individual variation in responses to exercise.
Programme Coordinator
Kate Westlake
Kate is responsible for all administrative aspects of the programme. Kate has worked at the University of Leicester since 2014, having graduated from the University of Sheffield with a Psychology BSc.