The Global Goals
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. Sheena's work contributes towards the following SDG(s):
About Sheena
Having been the (founding) Director of the Â鶹´«Ã½ Institute of Health and Care Research, I have recently assumed Directorship of the Centre for Health Technology, a focus of significant ambition and investment for the University. I am also the co-Director of the Centre for Coastal Communities, the first of its kind in the UK.
My original training was in global public health. Following an undergraduate degree in Geography at Oxford University (for which I was awarded a congratulatory First), I undertook my doctoral training at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. My PhD (in Community Medicine) focused on the role of community-based strategies in promoting health development in Indian slum communities and led to (WHO-funded) research on the scope for developing community-based responses to HIV prevention (again in India) with particular reference to commercial sex circuits and circuits of men who have sex with men.
I still publish and teach on issues relating to global public health. However, as I began to have the first of my five children, I shifted my research interests towards the UK. With respect to public health, examples include the largest local evaluation of a Health Action Zone, co-writing a major book on health inequalities and evidence-based public health and the chapter on coastal health inequalities in the 2021 Chief Medical Officer’s annual report and being a board member of the Royal Society for Public Health, a non-executive director (with the public health remit) of NICE and a non-executive director of Devon Integrated Care Board, with the remit for population health management, health inequalities and digital transformation. I recently stepped down from the board of Change Grow Live (though remain on its research committee). This is a national charity that provides, among other services, support for substance use, domestic abuse, children’s mental health and prisoner’s health. I have learnt a lot from CGL’s ‘Whole Person’ approach and this has complem