We are fortunate to be working with the following academic partners at the University of Plymouth:
Professor Sheena Asthana
Professor Sheena Asthana is:
- The Director of the Centre for Health Technology, and
- Co-Director of the Centre for Coastal Communities
at the University of Plymouth. Her original training was in global public health. Her PhD focused on community-based strategies to promote health development in Indian slum communities.
Sheena later shifted her research interests towards the UK. This includes evaluations of Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Health Action Zones, and work on social prescribing. She has also written major book on health inequalities and evidence-based public health. Sheena is academic lead for the Plymouth Health Determinants Research Collaboration.
In the chapter on coastal health inequalities in the 2021 Chief Medical Officer’s annual report, she highlighted the widening gap between health outcomes in coastal and in-land areas.
A growing focus of Sheena’s research is digital health technologies. She is interested in how they can support the shift from expensive, reactive hospital care to prevention, early diagnosis and care within the community.
Sheena has also established a large programme of health services research. This involves using extensive health service, public health and related datasets.
Sheena has been an applicant on over £40 million of funded research projects, £29m since 2020. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. She has also served as a non-executive director on several non-department public bodies and charities.
These include :
- the Commission for Rural Communities
- National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation
- NHS Devon
- Royal Society for Public Health
- Change Grow Live.
Sheena brings a wealth of research and teaching expertise. She is delighted to be involved in and hopes to bring value to HDRC Cornwall.
Professor Rebecca Hardwick
Rebecca is a Senior Research Fellow in Health Services Research. She is co-lead of the NIHR South West Peninsula Applied Research Collaborative (PenARC) Mental Health Research Initiative. Which has to be one of the longest job titles ever. Her work centres on applied mental health research that matters to the people and places of the South West of England.
Prior to academia, Rebecca worked in:
- policy implementation
- public health
- mental health voluntary sector
- and the mental health survivor movement.
Becky is experienced in realist methodology. She undertook at post-doctoral post at Charles Darwin University with Professor Gill Westhorp. They worked on:
- realist evaluations of international development programmes
- and domestic social and welfare projects.
She did her PhD at the University of Exeter. This was an ethnographic study of research and knowledge use in UK mental health third sector organisations.