DIRECTORS

Professor Irwin Nazareth
Joint Director of PRIMENT CTU
Professor Nazareth joined the department of Primary Care and Population Health at UCL in 1990, as a Sir Jules Thorne and MRC Research Fellow. He was appointed Senior Lecturer in 1995 and Professor in 2001. In 2005 he was appointed Director of the MRC GPRF. He is also Director of the PRIMENT Clinical Trials Unit which has a strong research focus on primary care mental health. He has particular expertise in using epidemiological and randomised trial methodology in gaining an understanding of and in the evaluation of health care initiatives and interventions.
His research interests include the epidemiology and management of:  physical health problems in people with severe mental illnesses; common mental disorders in primary care and the physical manifestations of mental health problems in the community.  More recently, he has been actively engaged in research on the epidemiology and transmission of influenza infections and is currently working closely with other researchers at UCL, the Health Protection Agency and the MRC Human Immunology Unit in Oxford, on the epidemiology of the H1N1 Influenza Pandemic.  His international work includes extensive research on primary care and mental health in Europe, South Africa and India. He is also a part time general practitioner at the Keats Group Practice in Hampstead, London.

Professor Michael King
Joint Director of PRIMENT CTU
Michael King completed his medical studies in New Zealand before coming to the United Kingdom to undertake a vocational training in general practice at the Hammersmith Hospital. He then moved to the Maudsley Hospital to train in psychiatry and later trained in psychiatric epidemiology at the General Practice Research Unit under the leadership of the late Professor Michael Shepherd.

Thus, much of his research focuses on primary mental health care. He is interested in how GPs recognise and manage mental health problems and the epidemiology of such problems in primary care populations. He has particular expertise in the methodology of randomised trials of complex interventions in primary and secondary care. He also has research and clinical interests in cognitive behaviour therapy and in sexual medicine.

Current research

Examples of recent and current externally funded projects are as follows:

Epidemiology: defining predictors of depression in general practice, a European wide study; the epidemiology of sexual dysfunction in primary care populations; a national study of the mental health of gay men and lesbians; religion, mental health and ethnicity.

Randomised trials: the effectiveness of training GPs how to deliver brief CBT and problem solving to their patients with common mental disorders; the effectiveness of advance service directives in reducing mental health sections in patients with serious mental illness; the effectiveness of brief psychotherapy in general practice; the effectiveness of carer support in palliative care; and the effectiveness of group art therapy for patients with schizophrenia.

Systematic reviews: the impact of patients' and professionals' preferences on the validity of randomised clinical trials; the mental health of gay men and lesbians; the role of psycho-stimulants in depression.

CORE GROUP

Dr Greta Rait 
Lead on Study/Trial Management
Specialist Interest - Mental Health & Infectious Disease
Greta Rait trained in general practice and worked as a research fellow at the Department of Psychiatry in Manchester. She joined UCL in 1998 as a Clinical Lecturer. She completed her MD and was awarded a MRC training fellowship in Health Services Research. This involved working on a national RCT of an arthritis self-management programme in primary care. She has a Masters in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
In 2003 she started a new research post between PCPS and the MRC General Practice Research Framework. She is leading the recruitment of practices and participants to the Second Infectious Intestinal Diseases Study (IID2), and is also leading a study looking at recruitment and attrition in clinical trials. She is involved with secondary data analysis using primary care databases. Her research interest areas include mental health (including dementia), complex interventions in primary care and infections.
She is a part-time GP at Clerkenwell Medical Practice, London, and Honorary Senior Academic in Primary Care at Islington Primary Care Trust. She is a member of the Clinical Studies Group for the Dementia and Neurodegenerative Diseases Research Network (DeNDRoN) and Primary Care lead for North Thames DeNDRoN.

Dr. Rumana Omar
Reader and Head of Biostatistics Group
Department of Statistical Science
The Biostatistics Group led by Rumana Omar sits across the UCL/UCLH/RFH Joint Biomedical Research Unit, UCL Department of Statistical Science, PRIMENT CTU, UCLP CTU and UCL Institute of Neurology.  The Group conducts both collaborative applied research, and investigation into statistical methodology required to address the challenges and needs of health research.

For more information about the Biostatistics Group please visit http://www.ucl.ac.uk/joint-rd-unit/statistics
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/statistics/research/biostatistics

Louise Letley
Lead on Quality Control - Assurance
Louise has been working for the MRC General Practice Research Framework since 1997 and is currently the Senior Nurse Manager with overall responsibility for the nursing aspects of GPRF studies. Louise developed an interest in research whilst working as a practice research nurse on the British Family Heart Study, a multi-centre trial of primary prevention of CHD. She then worked on several studies at the Department of Cardiac Medicine at the National Heart and Lung Institute. Louise also holds the position of treasurer to the UK Federation of Primary Care Research Organisations.

Tamsin Destrubé - Operations Manager 
Lead on Data Management
Tamsin d’Estrubé came to the GPRF in May 2005 after working for Camden and Islington Mental Health Trust. Tamsin has also run the UK branch of Decision Resources, a commercial research & consultancy firm working in the Pharma industry. Other jobs have taken her to Russia, Switzerland, Spain, Austria, and the US to name a few. Tamsin has a particular interest in Mental Health and Disability issues. Her role as Operations Manager is wide-ranging and she is involved in different aspects of HR, Finance, IT, corporate governance and regulatory issues. Tamsin is the Operations Manager for PRIMENT CTU and MRC GPRF.
 
CLINICAL EPIDEMIOLOGICAL GROUP
 
Dr Marta Buszewicz 
Special Interest - Mental Health 
Marta Buszewicz trained and qualified in both general practice and psychiatry. She works as a part-time GP in north London, and previously worked for five years as a full-time principal in an inner-city general practice in East London, with a very varied social and ethnic mix. Her research and teaching interests are mainly in the field of mental health, particularly depression, anxiety and somatisation, and the overlap between physical and psychological symptoms in primary care patients. She is also involved in projects examining the interface between primary and secondary care services for people with mental health problems, and trying to identify which components of routine GP consultations can have a therapeutic effect for patients presenting with psychological problems. Her research involves both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, and includes an MRC funded national randomised controlled trial of arthritis self-management in primary care and a national RCT of practice nurse led pro-active care for primary care patients with chronic or recurrent depression. She is also joint primary care lead for the north London hub of the Mental Health Research Network and co-director of the North Central / North East London Comprehensive Local Research Network.

Dr Elizabeth Murray
 Special Interest - E-Health
Elizabeth is a GP and job-share principal at the Lonsdale Medical Centre, a Beacon practice for clinical excellence. She joined the department in 1991 as a lecturer with a training research fellowship from the Royal College of General Practitioners, was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1996 and awarded her PhD in Medical Education from the University of Maastricht in 2001. She was a 2001-02 Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy, studying the effect of health information on the internet on the doctor-patient relationship. In 2002 she was awarded a Department of Health Career Scientist Award for a five-year programme of research on the effects of interactive health communication applications (IHCA) on health outcomes, health service utilisation and the doctor-patient relationship. Interactive health communication applications are computer-based, usually web-based packages for patients that combine health information with peer support, decision support, or behaviour change support.

Professor Steve Iliffe 
Special Interest - Care of Older People
Steve Iliffe is Professor of Primary Care for Older People at UCL, the only holder of such a chair in the UK. He is also co-director (with Professor Ann Bowling) of the Centre for Ageing Population Studies and was a General Practitioner in N.W. London from 1978 to 2007
His research activities include:

  • Investigation of barriers to recognition of and response to dementia in the community

  • An RCT of educational interventions in for dementia recognition in primary care 

  • An international RCT of health risk appraisal in older people, the ProAge study 

  • Smarter working in health and social care: the SWISH project 

  • The development and testing of a brief instrument for identifying unmet need in older people in general practice. 

  • A five year HTA programme on evidence based interventions in dementia in the community, from early diagnosis to end-of-life care (2007-2012) 

  • A multi-centre trial of exercise promotion for older people in general practice, the ProAct65+ study (2008-2012) 

  • Exploratory studies of unrecognised eye disease in the community Systematic reviews of the impact of hospital at home service.

As part of this stream of work he sits on the editorial board of Ageing and Mental Health, the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, the International Journal of Health Services, Primary Health Care Research & Development, the Journal of Dementia Care, and Geriatric Medicine.
Professor Iliffe contributed to the development of the NSF for Older People (2001), to the Department of Health’s Workforce task group for mental health in later life, and on the NICE guidelines group for falls prevention (2004). He was a member of the NICE/SCIE dementia guidelines development group (2006), and of the External reference group for the Department of Health’s Dementia Strategy (2008) He is on the medical advisory panels of the Alzheimer's Society and Alzheimer's Disease International.

Dr David Osborn
Special Interest - Mental Health
Dr Osborn became a senior lecturer and consultant in adult psychiatry in 2003. He works in the department of mental health sciences at UCL and was an MRC fellow in health services research from 1999-2002, leading to his PhD. His work examined cardiovascular risk factors in people with severe mental illness. To this end he has undertaken primary research in general practice examining cholesterol, blood pressure and diabetes. He continues to work closely with colleagues in primary care to research the best methods of delivering appropriate care to people with mental illnesses.

Dr Helen Killaspy
Special Interest - Rehabilitation Psychiatry
Dr Helen Killaspy is a senior lecturer and honorary consultant in rehabilitation psychiatry. From 1999 to 2004 she co-ordinated the “REACT” study (the first randomised controlled trial to be carried out in the UK that investigated the clinical and cost-effectiveness of “pure” assertive community treatment compared with usual care from community mental health teams for people with serious mental illnesses. The results of this study were published in the BMJ in 2006 and in 2007 she was awarded the Association of European Psychiatrists’ research prize for this paper.
She is Principal Investigator (PI) for a three year multicentre EC funded study (“DEMoBinc”) which started in 2007 in ten European countries to develop a toolkit to assess the quality of institutional care for people with long term mental health problems. She is PI for a recently awarded Programme Grant for Applied Research to study rehabilitation services in England funded by the National Institute of Health Research. This study will also use the DEMoBinc toolkit. She is joint PI (with Mike Crawford, Imperial College and Di Waller, Goldsmith’s College) for the first RCT to investigate the efficacy of group art therapy for people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia funded by the DH’s Heath Technology Assessment. She is Joint PI (with Professor Kwame McKenzie, UCL) for the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Pathways to Care study which has been funded by the DH to investigate access to mental health care for BME prisoners. She was PI for the evaluation of pilot voluntary sector projects which have been established across England to raise awareness of mental health issues among black and minority ethnic groups as part of the Department of Health’s Delivering Race Equality Initiative.
In 2007 she co-founded the North London Service User Research Forum with Scott Stevens (service user) and Professor Michael King. The forum aims to provide informed service user consultation for researchers and to educate service users about all aspects of research.
 
Professor Gill Livingston 
Special Interest - Dementia
Dr Livingston is a consultant old age psychiatrist, and research mental illness of older people in the community; particularly in people with dementia and their caregivers. Currently, the main projects she is involved with are a longitudinal study of an epidemiologically representative cohort of people with Alzheimer's disease (the LASER-AD study antidepressants in AD- the SADD study, caregiver anxiety and abuse (CARD study), a study of AD in different ethnic groups (HELP study) and a study of dementia and its subtypes in people with learning disability (the BOLD-memory project). The former study is concerned with carers' attribution in AD; anxiety, depression and coping strategies in caregivers; quality of life in severe AD; determinants of decline and death in AD and neuropsychiatric symptoms in AD.
Dr Livingston have been involved in a series of epidemiological studies in this field including ‘The Gospel Oak study’, which centred on the prevalence, incidence and associated risk factors in dementia and on the use of services. The more recent 'Islington studies' report morbidity in caregivers, prevalence of recently described dementias, psychiatric illness in minority groups, and intervention with caregivers and service use.

Dr Martin Orrell
Special Interest - Dementia
Current Posts
  • Professor of Ageing and Mental Health, Centre for Ageing and Mental Health Sciences, Department of Mental Health Sciences, University College London (2004-).
  • Honorary Consultant Old Age Psychiatrist, North East London Mental Health Trust (2000-)
  • Director of Research & Development, NELMHT (2001~)
  • Clinical Director/Associate Medical Director, Mental Health Services for Older People, NELMHT (2003~)
  • Editor, Aging and Mental Health (1997-).
  • Director/Chair of the London Centre for Dementia Care (2001-)
Qualifications
  • Bachelor of Medical Sciences (BMedSci)
  • Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (BM, BS)
  • Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
  • Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (FRCPsych)
Dr Claudia Cooper
Special Interest - Dementia
Dr Claudia Cooper is a senior lecturer and honorary consultant in old age psychiatry. She has worked at UCL since 2005, as clinical lecturer, then MRC Research Training Fellow in Health Services Research and as a senior lecturer in old age psychiatry since 2009. For her PhD, completed 2007, she investigated “coping and anxiety in carers of people with dementia”. Her research interests include dementia,elder abuse, carers’ mental health and health inequalities in old age. Currently, the main projects she is involved with are the CARD study (epidemiology of elder abuse), START study (RCT of an intervention to decrease depression and anxiety in carers of people with dementia) and CHOICE study (a qualitative study of information needs of carers of people with dementia).  She has also published analyses of the data from the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Surveys.

Dr Liz Sampson
Special Interest - Dementia
Dr Liz Sampson is a senior lecturer in old age psychiatry, Department of Mental Health Sciences (UCL), in a post supported by the Marie Curie Palliative Care Research Unit. Her principle research interests are palliative and end of life care in dementia; epidemiological and health services research, the development of complex interventions and advanced care planning. Other work includes research on liaison psychiatry for older people particularly the epidemiology and outcomes for older people with dementia and delirium on acute hospital wards.
She has also worked on clinical trials of new drug therapies for delirium and more recently dementia (with the north Thames DeNDRoN network).
She trained in medicine at Birmingham University and has an MSc in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Liz also works part time as a consultant in old age psychiatry with Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health Trust.
 
Dr Kate Walters 
Special Interest - Mental Health/Cardiovascular Disease
Kate Walters joined the Department of Primary Care and Population Health at UCL as an Academic Training Fellow in 1998, immediately after qualifying as a GP. From there she became a Clinical Lecturer at UCL, where she gained extensive experience in teaching, including developing and evaluating a new course in mental health in the community, gained a Masters Degree in Medical Education and co-authored a book on teaching medical students. She was then awarded an MRC Special Training Fellowship in Health Services Research, which she completed part-time from 2001-2007 gaining an MSc in Epidemiology and conducting an epidemiological study on outcomes of minor psychological distress, which forms the basis for her PhD. She was awarded a Walport Clinical Lecturer in Primary Care post at UCL in 2007 and promoted to Senior Clinical Lecturer in December 2007. She is currently working on five different epidemiological studies using the GPRD and THIN databases in the fields of mental health, older people, cardiac disease, unexplained symptoms and socio-economic variations in health, and is developing further work in these areas. She is also interested in developing and running trials on complex interventions, in particular educational interventions, in primary care mental health. She has been working on several projects in this field, for example an RCT of nurse-led case management for chronic depression. She works part-time as a GP locally in Keats Group Practice, Hampstead, London.

STATISTICAL & METHODOLOGICAL GROUP
 
Dr Richard Morris 
Reader in Medical Statistics and Epidemiology.
Richard joined the department in the Royal Free Hospital Medical School in 1992. His interest in the epidemiology of cardiovascular disease has steadily grown since then, and since 2003 he has been co-director of the internationally renowned British Regional Heart Study, which began in 1978, and continues to follow several thousand men into old age.
Richard has particular interests in exploring reasons for regional and social class variations in incidence of cardiovascular disease and its treatment, as well as time trends. He has spent much of his professional life advising individual medical researchers on statistical matters, and teaching critical appraisal of published research at all levels.
He formerly was involved in evaluation of orthopaedic surgery, particularly in comparing different models of hip and knee replacement. He has a wide experience of various forms of study design, especially with regard to research in primary care.

Dr Irene Petersen
Post Doctoral MRC Research Fellow                                                                                       Irene's work is focused on epidemiological research arising from primary care databases (GPRD and THIN). Irene holds a MRC special training fellowship to examine prescribed medicine in pregnancy using a cohort of linked mother and child records in THIN. Since 2002, she has conducted several primary care database studies and taken part in the design and provided methodological supervision on more than 20 studies covering topics in mental health, sexual health, infectious diseases and cardiovascular diseases.
Irene chairs a methodological group for users of primary care databases across UK universities. The group discuss current research or methodological issues related to primary care databases.
She received BUPA foundation epidemiology award 2006 (Highly commended) for collaborative work on the project 'Novel methods to improve surveillance of sexually transmitted infections in the UK: understanding the role of general practice.

Valerie Brueton
MRC Research Fellow
Valerie is a research fellow working on a project looking at recruitment and attrition in clinical trials. She joined the GPRF in January 2006 and was involved in recruitment to a number of studies run through the GPRF including the IID2, Fluwatch, ProCEED and Diabetes UK studies. She graduated from King’s College London with a BSc (Hons) in Nursing Studies and completed an MSc in Medical Demography at LSHTM. She has a clinical background in surgical nursing and has worked more recently on clinical trials and knowledge attitudes and practice surveys in the UK and Africa.

Baptiste Leurent 
Statistician
Baptiste obtained an MSc in statistics from the Statistical Institute of Paris University in 2006. He then worked at the Program for HIV Prevention and Treatment in Thailand; a research unit specialising in the prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV. Baptiste joined the GPRF in December 2006, where he works on different studies, in collaboration with the Marie Cure Palliative Care research Unit.

COLLABORATORS

Dr Andrew Hayward  
Senior Lecturer in Infectious Diseases
Andrew trained in medicine at St Thomas' Hospital Medical School. He subsequently trained in epidemiology and public health at The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre. He became a Senior Lecturer at the UCL Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology in 2001. At UCL he has developed a programme of research in infectious disease epidemiology with a particular focus on diseases that are of public health importance in the developed world and common infections encountered in primary care settings. Specific areas of interest include the link between antibiotic prescribing and the development of antibiotic resistance, the epidemiology and control of tuberculosis, the epidemiology and control of influenza and the use of the General Practice Research Database to study infections in primary care.

Dr Hazel Gilbert 
 Senior Research Fellow
After gaining a BA in psychology, Hazel joined the Human Psychopharmacology Group at the University of Reading as a Research Assistant, where she completed her PhD on smoking cessation. In 2000 she joined UCL, working in the Health Behaviour Unit as a Research Psychologist, before moving to the Department of Primary Care in January 2004.
Hazel’s main research interest is in the social cognitive aspects of smoking cessation. She currently leads on projects exploring how therapies such as CBT, particularly in the form of brief interventions, can be used as an adjunct to pharmacotherapies to increase cessation rates. Together with Professor Stephen Sutton at the University of Cambridge, she has developed a system of personal feedback, using social cognitive models of behaviour change and principles of cognitive behavioural therapy. The feedback has been developed to target both less motivated quitters, and smokers of lower reading abilities, and is being evaluated in a large randomised controlled trial funded by Cancer Research UK, using proactive recruitment of known smokers on GP lists. Hazel aims to promote the use of this type of intervention in different settings within primary care and in population based studies. She is investigating the feasibility of using computer aids for smoking cessation in community pharmacy, in a study funded by NoCLoR.
Hazel has also collaborated in research with the UK charity Quit®, assessing enhancements to services offered by telephone helplines, in the form of additional proactive counselling, and computer-tailored personalised feedback, and continues to work closely with the helpline. In addition she collaborates with the Behavioural Science Group, at the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Public Health, on smoking cessation projects using internet and mobile phone technology.
Hazel is a Chartered Health Psychologist and also does clinical work in smoking cessation.

UKCRC Registered Clinical Trials Units website is Launched

A new comprehensive online resource listing national expertise in the design and conduct of clinical trials is launched www.ukcrc-ctu.org.uk.

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