University of Limerick

Faculty Member, Graduate Entry Medical School

Professor in Primary Healthcare Research

Faculty of Education and Health Sciences

About

I am delighted to hold this innovative post of Chair in Primary Healthcare Research at the Graduate Entry Medical School, University of Limerick in Ireland. This is a new Chair and the first post of its kind to be open to academics from non-medical backgrounds in Ireland.

My background is in psychology and sociology (BA, 1992) an Health Promotion (MA, 1995; PhD, 1998). My focus is now Primary Care and I have particular interests in the sociology of health and illness, qualitative research and participatory learning and action research methods.

I lead a programme of research about user involvement in primary health care and my research interests centre around:

User involvement in primary care research and service development; how can users be meaningfully engaged in shaping primary care? What is the role of participatory action research in achieving user involvement? How can desired changes by service users be implemented or normalised in routine healthcare? Can implementation and normalisation processes be enabled by the Normalisation Process Theory?

I am exploring these research interests through  partnerships with colleagues in the Irish Health Service Executive and with Mary O'Reilly-de Brún and Tomas de Brún of the Centre for Participatory Strategies, Galway. These partnerships have led to a series of empirical studies about migrant health and communication in cross-cultural general practice consultations (since 2002).

I am also exploring these research interests through my participation in the UK Normalisation Process Model International Study Group which is led by Prof Carl May, University of Newcastle.  This study group is committed to the development of a theoretical model to explain and predict implementation of innovation in healthcare settings. The specific remit of the group is to apply the model and theory to empirical studies to ascertain its utility and robustness. There is also a remit to develop a users’ manual to make the model and theory accessible to a wide audience of users (researchers, service planners, policy makers).  I am part of the international manual development group since 2007. You can look at www.normalizationprocess.org for further information.

In 2009-2010 I successfully co-ordinated an FP7 proposal  - value of award €2.9 million. This project started in April 2011 and focuses on the involvement of migrants and other stakeholders in implementation of guidelines and/or training initiatives to support communication in cross-cultural consultations.

This proposal was developed with local collaborators Mary O’Reilly-de Brún and Tomas de Brún (both of the Centre for Participatory Strategies, Galway) and with international partners Prof Catherine O’Donnell & Prof Frances Mair (University of Glasgow), Prof Chris Dowrick (University of Liverpool), , Dr. Wolfgang Spiegel (Medical University of Vienna),  Prof. Maria- van den Muijsenbergh & Prof. Evelyn van Weel-Baumgarten (Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre) and Prof. Christos Lionis (University of Crete).


I am also Principal Investigator for an Irish Health Research Board Research Award value of award €210,639. This project analyses current definitions of, and methods used for, user involvement in international and national contexts and will started in December 2010.

Co-applicants are Mary O’Reilly de Brún (Centre for Participatory Strategies, Galway) and Rachel McEvoy (HSE) with Tomas deBrún (Centre for Participatory Strategies, Galway), Ekaterina Okonkwo (Galway Migrant Service) and Prof Anne Rogers (University of Manchester) as collaborators.

In 2009-2010 I also was Guest Editor for a special issue on Health and Migration for Translocations Migration and Social Change An Irish Inter-Disciplinary Open Access e-journal (see http://www.translocations.ie/current_issue.html)

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