I am a Clinical Reader in Social & Psychiatric Epidemiology at King's College London (IoPPN) and an Honorary Consultant Liaison Psychiatrist with South London & Maudsley Trust/ King's College Hospital. 

My research interests centre on mental health inequalities and methodologies to understand and address this. I previously led a six year programme of research relating to physical health in severe mental illnesses, with a focus on intersections with ethnicity and other inequalities. I was part of the evidence review and synthesis team which supported the development of WHO guidelines on the management of physical health conditions in adults with severe mental disorders. More recently our team's focus has moved to examining the impact of COVID-19 on widening ethnic inequalities in mental health outcomes, which we are assessing through quantitative analysis of large-scale datasets and qualitative methodologies.  I am also interested in the possibility of data linkage to maximise the potential of existing datasets, having led a database linkage of electronic health records from South London & Maudsley Trust (CRIS) to UK Census records, to better understand social predictors and outcomes in people living with psychosis. Our team has also developed novel text mining approaches to identify employment and occupations from free text in mental health records, which we are developing with a view to understanding occupational inequalities experienced by people with mental health problems. I am the cohorts and statistics platform co-lead for the KCL ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health.  

Clinical expertise

I lead an outpatient consultation liaison service for older adults with geriatric medicine at King's College Hospital and have a clinical interest in detecting and optimising the management of mental disorders in older people living with complex medical comorbidities. I am a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (FRCPsych).

Research interests

Data linkage and application to monitoring/ addressing health inequalities, mental health inequalities in migrant and ethnic minority groups, the role of residential contexts/ neighbourhoods in patterning mental health/ health outcomes, urban mental health, life course perspectives on ethnic minority health across generations, the interface of mental and physical health, common mental disorders, epidemiological study design and methods, locally/ nationally representative cross-sectional surveys and cohorts. multi-level modelling of neighbourhoods and longitudinal data analysis/ cohort studies.

Teaching

I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and hold a PGCAPHE qualification.

Module co-leader on 'Advanced Statistical Methods in Psychiatric Epidemiology' module (Global Mental Health MSc offered jointly across KCL & LSHTM)

PhD, MSc, intercalated BSc and DClinPsy supervision

Co-editor of textbook 'Practical Psychiatric Epidemiology: 2nd edition (OU Press)' 

Information on current studies:

Protocol for ECHASM

Privacy notice for APMS data usage for study on MP health 

Privacy notice for APMS data usage for study on multimorbidities