QSO 2 Team

Karen Jones is the Director of the Personal Social Services Research Unit (PSSRU) within the University of Kent and the Interim Director of the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Policy Research Unit in Quality, Safety and Outcomes (QSO2). Karen is also the Deputy Director of the NIHR Adult Social Care (ASCRU2) Policy Research Unit and the Principal Investigator of the NIHR-funded Unit Costs of Health and Social Care Programme.

Karen’s research focuses on delivering high quality research that makes a difference within the social and health care sector and to people’s lives. Karen’s focus is also to produce accurate unit cost estimations that supports health/care policy developments alongside informing decisions in regard to budgets for public services and the cost impact of budgetary decisions.

PSSRU, University of Kent

Sarah Birch is a Public Involvement and Engagement Manager at PSSRU within the University of Kent, supporting a variety of programmes including ‘Quality, Safety and Outcomes of Health and Social Care (QSO) Policy Research Unit’,  ‘Unit Costs for Health and Social Care’ and ‘The Benefits and Costs of Domiciliary care’. Sarah co-ordinates a nationwide research advisor network and works with members in our Public Involvement Strategy and Implementation Group (PISIG) and our Public Involvement Research Advisory Network (PIRAN) to ensure strategic and advisory patient and public involvement and engagement is embedded within the research unit.  Sarah is also the Head of Public and Community Involvement for the REAL Supply Unit, which is a collaborative 7-year programme led by the University of York, researching the economics of Health and Social Care for the long term.

PSSRU, University of Kent

Linda Mulcahy is the Statutory Chair of Socio-Legal Studies and Director of the Centre for Socio-legal Studies at Oxford University. She has previously held posts at the LSE, Birkbeck, South bank University, Bristol University and the Law Commission. Linda’s research focuses on the ways in which people experience and navigate the legal system. She uses a range of qualitative methods including life story interviews, unstructured interviews, observation and surveys in exploring these issues. Her research has received funding from the ESRC, NIHR, Department of Health, AHRC, Leverhulme Trust, Nuffield Trust. She has a particular expertise in disputes between doctors and patients. .

Michele Peters is an Associate Professor in Health Services Research at the Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford. Her research focuses on achieving good outcomes and quality of life for patients, services users and carers through the delivery of high-quality health and social care services. Michele is also the teaching lead for medical sociology in the Oxford Medical School. Within QSO, Michele is the theme lead on ‘Outcomes’ and ‘Equality, Diversity and Inclusion’.

Chris is the CEO of Picker, a leading international charity that exists to promote and improve person centred care. A researcher by background, Chris has particular expertise in measuring, understanding, and using people’s experiences of health and care and has worked with partners around the world to develop approaches to gathering feedback from patients, service users and staff. This has included extensive work on the development of the NHS Staff and Patient Survey Programmes, two of the largest programmes of their kind anywhere in the world.

 As well as his work at Picker and being part of the Quality, Safety, and Outcomes of Health and Social Care Policy Research Unit, Chris is a National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) faculty member and a non-executive director at the Professional Records Standards Body (PRSB). Chris studied Experimental Psychology at Pembroke College, University of Oxford.

Amy is Head of Research at Picker, where she is accountable for the design, management, delivery and performance of a range of research projects that measure and understand the quality of health and social care, to ultimately inform improvement. During her research career she has led on the development of a range of programmes to enable care experiences to be meaningfully understood, using quantitative and qualitative research approaches. She has developed patient experience surveys across a range of areas including children’s cancer care, pancreatic cancer, sickle cell disease, NHS 111, neonatal care and health visiting. She also provides expert consultancy in the field of person-centred care. Read more about Amy at https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-tallett-99422a60/

Research Advisor for the Public Involvement Strategy and Implementation Group (PI-SIG) and the Engagement and Dissemination sub-group. Alison has an active interest in embedding PPI throughout the research process, and particularly involving PPI in the prioritisation of research topics and questions. In addition to her involvement with QSO Alison is involved in several other organisations. She is a commissioner of the Jersey Care Commission (an arm’s length body responsible for the regulation and inspection of health and social care services on island). She holds a non-clinical honorary contract with the Royal Marsden Hospital, London where she is PPI lead for the uncommon cancers working group. She is also an advisory member of the Chronic Illness Inclusion Project. Currently, a panel member of NIHR Health Services and Delivery Research and Research for Patient Benefit and the CRUK Population Research Committee

For QSO, Anica focuses on bringing the public voice into academic and public policy decision making.  She has first-hand experience in the practical delivery of health and mental health care strategies, primarily making these equitably accessible for those in farming, military and mixed urban communities.  Beyond QSO, she holds a variety of roles: she is Vice Chair of the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE)’s Quality Standards committee, and sits on the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR)’s Programme Grants for Applied Research funding committee.  She has worked in prisons, with social enterprise charities and as a Lay Rep for Health Education England.  Additionally, she has lived experience of childhood diseases, youth mental health concerns, multiple long-term conditions, and dementia and end-of-life care.  She has recently finished a master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence, Ethics and Society, and has a particular interest in helping to make technology effective for marginalised groups.

Matthew is the joint PPI co-lead and responsible for the strategic planning and implementation of PPI across the PRU. He has a background in social work, social work training, social work management and in curriculum development in a variety of educational contexts. His involvement in PPI is borne out of the experience of caring for and losing a close family member to cancer. He is currently a member of the National Cancer Research Institute Consumer Forum and he sits in a lay advisory capacity on two CRUK Expert Review Panels and on the CRUK Clinical Research Committee. He is a member of the steering committees of several trials and population-based studies relating to cancer research and social welfare

Policy Research: Jennifer has led and been a co-applicant for 3 NIHR Policy Research Units (QSO; PIRU & PH) & is currently the co-lead for PPI for QSO and ASCRU2. She is a former member and PPI chair of the Cancer Diagnosis/Screening PRU & she sits on the Scientific Advisory Board for the Behavioural Science PRU.

Government Advisory: Jennifer is a former member of the NIHR Covid College of Experts & the Govt National Clinical Audit Advisory Group.

Ethics: Jennifer is a former Wellcome Trust Biomedical Ethics Scholar at KCL law school.  Jennifer is the former Chair of the Public Advisory Group and the Ethics Lead for RDS London and national RDS ethics advisor and trainer. She is a former Vice Chair of an NHS Research Ethics Committee (REC) & former Co-Chair & training lead for a global REC (Save the Children). She is currently the Chair of the newly formed REC at RAND Europe.

Research and Public Funding: Jennifer has sat on 5 NIHR funding panels, the CRUK Early Diagnosis funding panel, the RfPB Chair’s Interview Panel and is currently on the HTA Board & the UKRI Multimorbidity funding panel. She is a former Vice Chair of an NHS London Independent Funding Review (IFR) panel and a member of the NHS England national IFR. She has also sat on the UKRI/MRC funding panels. Jennifer is the current Co-Chair of an NHS ICB health and wellbeing Board.

Clinical Guidelines: Jennifer sat for a number of years as a Guideline Development and Quality Standards member for NICE and has served the Healthcare Infection Society writing guidelines on Covid-19; MRSA and Rituals & Behaviours in Surgery.

Inspectorate & Medico-Legal: Outside research Jennifer works in medico-legal investigation as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons RCS Invited Review Mechanism in UK and Eire. She is a former CQC Inspector/MHA Commissioner, RCGP Quality Assessor and LLP General Practice performance Assessor. She was a founding member of the HSSIB’s citizen panel. Jennifer is a former independent member and Chair of an NHS Mental Health Act Appeals Panel.

Teaching: Jennifer designs and delivers training on PPI and Ethics & is a former independent visiting lecturer to the KCL medical school where she taught psychiatric ethics. She has delivered training to the HRA, Academia, NIHR and the NHS on PPIE and ethics.

Lived Experience: Jennifer’s interest in health and social care comes from her living with a complex long term condition and caring for parents with complex health and social care needs.

Editorial, Publications and Public Speaking: Her PPI work has been published in a number of journals and other arenas and she has written on ethics for a Wiley encyclopaedia. She has spoken at national and international academic, clinical and Government conferences and is twice winner of the ISOQOL patient partner award and was the first non-psychiatrist to win the MHRN award for ‘Outstanding contribution to psychiatry’. Jennifer sits on the editorial board of the Wiley journal ‘Health Expectations’. You can see some of Jennifer’s work at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jennifer_Bostock