Departmental News
13 August 2010
Many congratulations to Sarah Gunn, Emily Henderson, Amanda Owen-Smith, Kyla Thomas and Rob Whistance on their recent fellowship successes.
Here are the details of their fellowships:
Sarah Gunn NIHR: PhD fellowship
Emily Henderson Assoc. Brit. Neurologists: PhD fellowship (Neurology)
Amanda Owen Smith NIHR: Post Doc fellowship
Kyla Thomas NIHR: PhD fellowship (Public Health)
Rob Whistance NIHR: PhD fellowship (Surgery)
5 August 2010
Will Hollingworth along with colleagues Jonathan Sterne, Penny Whiting, Roger Harbord, Rod Laing and Nicholas Higgins have been awarded £144,910 from the NIHR HTA Programme. The study evaluates the "The diagnostic utility and cost-effectiveness of selective nerve root blocks in patients considered for lumbar decompression surgery" The grant will run for 15 months from September 2010.
2 August 2010
Today the Department of Social Medicine became part of the School of Social and Community Medicine.
6 July 2010
The School Manager for the School of Social and Community Medicine will be Anne Rennie.
Names of Sections within each School have been confirmed.
Aetiological Epidemiology - Head of Section Professor Debbie Lawlor
Health Care Evaluation - Head of Section Professor Chris Salisbury
Health Care Research - Head of Section Professor Jonathan Sterne
Clinical Epidemiology - Head of Section Professor Glyn Lewis
15 June 2010
Congratulations to the staff who have been promoted this year:-
Matthew Hickman - Professor in Public Health and Epidemiology
John Macleod - Professor in Clinical Epidemiology and Primary Care
Caroline Trotter - Senior Research Fellow
Penny Whiting - Senior Research Fellow
Abigail Fraser - Research Fellow
7 June 2010
Kimberley Burrows has been awarded a Wellcome Trust 4 year PhD scolarship. She will be supervised by Santi Rodriguez and Ian Day on 'Immuno-PCR Developments for Cohort Based Biomarker Studies' and will start in October 2010.
25 May 2010
Mona Jeffreys, Richard Martin and Tom Palmer have been awarded £34,803 from the British Medical Association (Gunton Award) for a project looking at the relationship between vitamin D supplements and cancer risk in women, using the General Practice Research Database.
24 May 2010
Mr Neil Davies has been awarded an Alumni Foundation Award for attendance at the Society for Epidemiologic Research Conference, Seattle (£400).
20 May 2010
Andrew Crawford has been successful with his application to undertake a 4 year PhD with Glynn Lewis on 'genetic predictors of adverse effects of antidepressants' in October 2010.
23 April 2010
Mona Jeffreys and Jenny Donovan have been awarded £90,000 for "Healthy Lives in ProtecT Participants (HeLLP)".
Yoav Ben-Shlomo has received a research contract from Cambridge UHT "Meta-analysis on Central Blood Pressure". £15,000.
21 April 2010
Millar T (PI), Ades A, Bird S, Buchan I, Davies L, DeAngelis D, Donmall M, Dunn G, Godfrey C, Hickman M, Hutchinson S, King R, Marsden J, Millar T, Seddon T, Welton J. Incidence, prevalence, harms and intervention effects for problem and injecting drug use: crime, morbidity & mortality. MRC Addiction Panel £674,100.
6 April 2010
Press coverage of "Low birth weight and adult diabetes genetic link " by R Freathy, N Timpson, D Evans, B Glaser, J Holly, S Ring, G Davey Smith, and others. Their paper has been published in Nature Genetics Online.
31 March 2010
George Davey Smith has been given the American Psychosomatic Society Patricia R Barchas Award 2010 in Sociophysiology "in recognition of the importance and sophistication of research".
29 March 2010
Rona Campbell has received an Enterprise Development Award for £11,000 from RED to help with the setting up of a not-for-profit company to support the dissemination of the ASSIST smoking prevention programme.
Rona Campbell is a co applicant on a successful grant application to NIHR Public Health, led by Dr Chris Bonnell from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, entitled 'The effects of schools and school-environment interventions on health: evidence mapping and syntheses.' The award is for £182,641.
26 March 2010
David Gunnell and Chris Metcalfe along with Michael Eddleston (PI, Edinburgh) and colleagues from the South Asian Clinical Toxicology Collaboration have been awarded approx £750,000 by the Wellcome Trust to conduct a community (cluster) randomised trial to determine whether 'Safe Storage' of pesticides (in locked boxes) reduces pesticide self-poisoning in rural Asia.
24 March 2010
Luisa Zuccolo has been awarded a 4 year (2010-2014) MRC Population Health Scientist Fellowship. She will be studying trans-generation effects of parental alcohol use on childhood development and teenage drinking, using data from ALSPAC and other birth-cohorts including the Norwegian study MoBa. Luisa will be supervised by Professor George Davey Smith and will be based in the MRC CAiTE Centre.
Andy Boyd and Kerry Humphries have been awarded £44,999 from the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills to fund a Further Education Data Linkage project. This will run from 1 June 2010 until 31 May 2012.
23 March 2010
Prof. Yoav Ben-Shlomo has been awarded an Institute for Advanced Studies University Research Fellowship (£8,206 1st Aug 2010 – 31st July 2011) examining opportunities and challenges in integrating ageing research from the cellular level to populations. He will aim to coalesce a critical mass of cross-disciplinary researchers interested in ageing research at the University of Bristol with the possibility of the formation of a new research theme around ageing. Over the period of his research leave, he will aim to establish international collaborations and undertake further work around neuroendocrine influences on ageing.
19 March 2010
Yoav Ben-Shlomo, Jeremiah Scharf and Carol Matthews have been awarded $37,218 from the TSA-US society to extend the analyses of ALSPAC data for Tourette's syndrome.
15 March 2010
George Davey Smith and colleagues John Deanfield, Naveed Sattar, Vivek Muthuangu have been awarded £759,950 from the British Heart Foundation. " The impact of adiposity on risk profiles and the emerging arterial phenotype in the young". The grant is due to start on 1/7/10 for 4 years.
11 March 2010
David Gunnell along with colleagues Richard Martin, Frank Windmeijer and Chris Metcalfe have been awarded £99,552 from the MHRA Research Progamme. "Medicines that may promote suicide: a pharmaco-epidemiological analysis of risk and risk assessment". The grant will run for two years from 2010 until 2012.
10 March 2010
The Parkinson's disease society has awarded £4,999,819 to a new programme entitled "Understanding the early pathological pathways to Parkinson's Disease." to Dr. Richard Wade-Martins and colleagues at Oxford University (including Prof. Yoav Ben-Shlomo, University of Bristol). The programme has three components (a) A large clinical cohort for development of novel biomarkers (b) Improved cellular and genetic models (c) Novel animal models of early dysfunction. Prof. Yoav Ben-Shlomo will be involved with the clinical cohort arm of the programme.
4 February 2010
Matthew Hickman has been appointed as a Non Executive Member of the Advisory Group on Hepatitis (AGH) for the Department of Health.
3 February 2010
Will Hollingworth has been awarded £7,960 from the National Institutes of Health for a study of cancer diagnosis as a risk factor for personal bankruptcy. It started on 1 January 2010 and will run until 31 December 2011.
19 January 2010
Richard Durbin, Leena Peltonen, along with co-applicants Jeffrey Barrett, Aarno Palotie, Ines Barroso, Matthew Hurles, Nicole Soranzo, Eleftheria Zeggini, Tim Spector, Ismaa Sadaf Farooqi, Stephen Patrick O'Rahilly, George Davey Smith and collaborators Robert Semple, David Bousfield Savage, V Krishna K Chatterjee, Lucy Raymond, Shoumo Bhattacharya, Jamie Bentham, David FitzPatrick, David Collier, Peter McGuffin, Patrick Bolton, David St Clair, Philip Beales, Daniel Geschwind, Peter Scambler and Stephen Humphries have been awarded £10,423,000 from the Wellcome Trust. 10000 UK genome sequences: accessing the role of rare genetic variants in health and disease. The grant is due to start on 1 April 2010 and will run for 36 months.
17 Decembr 2009
Sue Ingle who is in the 4th year of an MRC funded PhD studentship has received a "Young Investigator Award" for her abstract "Pre-treatment Mortality and Probability of Starting ART in Patients Enrolled in the Free State ARV Program, South Africa: Implications for Treatment Guidelines" which she will present as an oral at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI February 2010) in San Francisco.
16 December 2009
Lynn Molloy and Kerry Humphries have been awarded £85,700 by the Department for Children, Schools & Families. Enhancement of ALSPAC data collection at age 18. The grant will start on 1 January 2010 and will run until 30 September 2011.
15 December 2009
Matthew Hickman along with A Taylor (PI), S Cameron, E Allen and D Best have been awarded £391,548 by the Scottish Prison Service. Survey of Hepatitis C. Prevalence amongst prisoners in Scotland. The grant will start in 2010 and will run until 2012.
14 December 2009
Bruna Galobardes has received a Wellcome Trust Intermediate Clinical Fellowship. "Life course inequalities in asthmas: estimating its burden and understanding its aetiology". The grant will run from 2010 until 2015.
30 November 2009
Dr Shu-Sen Chang has just been awarded a 1 year post doctoral fellowship to study at Bristol by the National Science Council, Taiwan (Sept 2010-August 2011).
23 November 2009
Debbie Lawlor is chief investigator on a project grant with AC Santos & H Barros from the University of Porto - Desenvolvimento da obesidade e da síndrome metabólica na infância (Development of obesity and the metabolic syndrome in infancy) (PTDC/SAU-ESA/105033/2008) - from the Portuguese Research Council. The amount awarded is € 180.000,00.
21 October 2009
Kate Northstone (PI) has been awarded £98,583 by the World Cancer Research Fund. The title is "The relationship between dietary patterns and changes in body fatness and lean mass". The grant will start on 1st March 2010 and will run for 2 years.
7 September 2009
The Bristol Civic Society has given an environmental award to the Department for the extension to Canynge Hall on Whatley Road. The ceremony will be on November 17th.
10 August 2009
Kate Tilling (PI) and Jonathan Sterne along with colleagues at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (James Carpenter and Mike Kenward) and Ghent University (Stijn Vansteelandt) have been awarded £481,663 by the MRC to develop and disseminate robust methods for handling missing data in epidemiological studies, with particular focus on the application of these methods in longitudinal studies (including ALSPAC). The grant will start on the 1st October 2009 and will run until 30th September 2012.27 July 2009
The MRC has awarded Matt Hickman and colleagues (John Macleod, Marcus Munafo and Alan Emond) an addiction cluster known as causes, epidemiology and prevention of substance use (and gambling) among young people.
Katie Turner has been awarded an NIHR Post Doctoral fellowship on the applied modelling of public health interventions against sexually transmitted infections from 12 January 2010 for three years (£271,347), supervised by Matt Hickman, Paddy Horner and John Edmunds (London School of Hygeine and Tropical Medicine).
24 July 2009
Caroline Wilson has been awarded an ESRC Fellowship for 2 years from 30 September 2009. She will be supervised by Helen Lambert.
21 July 2009
Caroline Trotter and James Stuart are members of a global research consortium that plans to examine transmission of the bacteria that cause meningococcal meningitis and to assess the impact of a new
meningitis vaccine in Sub-Saharan Africa. The African Meningococcal Carriage Consortium (MenAfriCar), led by Professor Brian Greenwood at LSHTM, has received funding of over £7milllion from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust. The consortium will combine the expertise of leading scientists from 12 centres in developed countries and 8 African partners, with the Department of Social Medicine providing modelling & statistical support to the project.
http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/news/2009/meningitis.html
26 June 2009
Yoav Ben-Shlomo has been awarded £26,200 by the Tourettes Syndrome Association for an "Evaluation of prenatal and perinatal risk factors for Tourette Syndrome and chronic tic disorders in a large, prospective, population-based cohort.
19 June 2009
Debbie Lawlor (PI) and colleagues at Bristol University (George Davey Smith, David Evans, Kate Tilling, Sue Ring, Nic Timpson, Beate Glaser, Tom Gaunt & Wendy McArdle) and CNG Paris (Mark Lathrop) have been awarded £2,306,620 by the Wellcome Trust to complete a genome-wide association study of maternal pregnancy phenotypes and later-life maternal and offspring vascular and metabolic phenotypes in ALSPAC. The grant will run until 2011.
Debbie Lawlor (PI), together with colleagues from Newcastle (Chris Day) and Denmark (Thorkild Sorensen) has been awarded EU185,776 for a work-package on Occurrence and determinants of adolescent Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease as part of a large EU FP7 programme - Fatty Liver - Inhibition of Progression (EU 5,994,486) on which she is a co-applicant. The grant will continue until 2012.
Debbie Lawlor, together with colleagues from Bristol (Patricia Lucas and George Davey Smith) and from Spain, Norway, Denmark, Italy and the Netherlands have been awarded EU 1,490,124 by the EU FP7 programme for Developing a Child Cohort Research Strategy for Europe. The grant will continue until 2012.
Debbie Lawlor, together with colleagues from Glasgow (Naveed Sattar and Dilys Freeman) and Bradford (John Wright and Jane West) have been awarded £144,001 by the British Heart Foundation to examine the intrauterine environment and differences in adiposity and insulin resistance between south Asian and European populations. The grant will continue until 2011.
Debbie Lawlor, together with colleagues from London (Shah Ebrahim (PI), Peter Whincup, Richard Morris, Hanna Kuper, Jaun-Pablo Casas & Goya Wannamethee have been awarded two grants - £538, 932 from the Department of Health and £308,528 from the British Heart Foundation to continue following up the British Women's Heart and Health Study. Both grants will continue until 2012.
22 May 2009
Becky Gilbert, Raquel Granell and Athene Lane along with researchers in COBM (Claire Emmett and Sarah Sullivan) and Exercise, Nutrition and Health Sciences (Jo Coulson) have been awarded funding from the Institute of Advanced Studies to organise a series of three workshops hosted by IAS on trials and population health for research staff.
21 May 2009
The following promotions and progressions have been confirmed, to take effect from 1st August 2009.
Congratulations to:
Will Hollingworth, Reader in Health Economics
Helen Lambert, Reader in Medical Anthropology
Kate Tilling, Reader in Medical Statistics
Mona Jeffreys, Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology
Sarah Lewis, Senior Lecturer in Genetic Epidemiology
Chris Metcalfe, Senior Lecturer in Medical Statistics
Suzanne Audrey, Research Fellow
Kerry Avery, Research Fellow
21 May 2009
The Department of Social Medicine was awarded a bronze at the University of Bristol's Green Impact Awards.18 May 2009
John Henderson has been awarded £238,000 by the ESRC along with Emilia Del Bono (Essex), Maria Iacovou
(Essex), Almudena Sevilla-Sanz (Oxford) and Birgitta Rabe (Essex). to investigate the relationship between breastfeeding and a range of individual outcomes, including cognitive and non-cognitive development; maternal mental health; and mothers' return to work and absenteeism.
15 May 2009
George Davey Smith has been awarded a Flexible Travel Award for sabbatical expenses from the Wellcome Trust entitled "Integrating genetic and epigenetic measures into India-based projects".
1 May 2009
George Davey Smith been elected Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacturing and Commerce (FRSA).
28 April 2009
Jenny Donovan has been elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci).
14 April 2009
Richard Martin and colleagues Jenny Donovan, Freddie Hamdy [Oxford], David Neal [Cambridge], Sian Noble, Athene Lane, Jonathan Sterne, Chris Metcalfe, Yoav Ben-Shlomo, Stephen Oliver [York], Jane Wolstenholme [Oxford], Peter Brindle and Simon Evans have been awarded £1.05 million by CRUK for "Evaluating population-based screening for localised prostate cancer in the United Kingdom: the CAP (Comparison Arm for ProtecT) study." The start date is January 2010 for 3 years.
6 April 2009
Santi Rodriguez and co-investigators Ian Day, Jenny Donovan, Athene Lane, Angela Cox (University of Sheffield), Freddie Hamdy (University of Oxford) and David Neal (University of Cambridge) have been awarded £38,621 for one year from Cancer Research UK. The title of the project is "Genetic basis of low PSA levels in the general population and implications for prostate cancer screening and diagnosis: a pilot nested within the ProtecT study". 2009-2010.
12 March 2009
Matt Hickman, George Davey Smith, Ian Day, Glyn Lewis, John Macleod, Marcus Munafo, Jonathan Sterne, Kate
Tilling and Nic Timpson have been awarded £152,902 from the MRC. The title is "ALSPAC and Adolescent Substance Use Trajectories: Consolidation of a UK research resource". April 2009-March 2011.
2 March 2009
Press coverage of "TV watching linked to increased risk of asthma" by A Sherriff, M Anirban, AR Ness, C Mattocks, C Riddoch, JJ Reilly, JY Paton and AJ Henderson. This paper has been published at Online First Thorax.
2 February 2009
Caroline Trotter and Matthew Hickman, together with Linda Glennie and Chris Head from the Meningitis Research Foundation in Thornbury (www.meningitis.org.uk), have been awarded £139,667 for a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (http://www.ktponline.org.uk/). A KTP associate will be appointed in March for 30 months to investigate the after-effects of meningitis.
28 January 2009
Matthew Hickman and colleagues Farrell M (King's), Marsdon J (King's), King J (Manchester), Metcalfe C (Bristol) have been funded by the Home Office for the "Evaluation of Integrated Drug Treatment System in Prisons". The award is for £612,589. 2009-2012.
16 January 2009
Professor George Davey Smith together with colleagues S Jebb, KA Lindroos and P Emmett have been funded by the World Cancer Research Fund International 2008/31 for "Dietary determinants of fat mass in adolescents". The award is for £93,863 and will run from 1 February 2009 to 31 January 2011.
15 January 2009
Professor Debbie Lawlor, together with other colleagues from the Department (Dr Abigail Fraser, Professors Jonathan Sterne and George Davey Smith), the United Bristols NHS Trust (Dr Mark Callaway) and colleagues at the University of Newcastle (Professor Chris Day) and University of Glasgow (Professor Naveed Sattar) has been awarded £548,636 by the Medical Research Council to examine the utility of biomarkers for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in adolescents. The grant will run from April 2009 to March 2012.
12 January 2009
Ian Day has been awarded funding from MRC to establish a doctoral training core of ten new four (1+3) year Ph.D. studentships applying computational, mathematical and statistical approaches in biomedical research. This will nucleate 'Bristol Centre for Systems Biomedicine' (BCSBmed), and includes applicants drawn from both medical Faculties, Mathematics and Statistics (Science) and Engineering Maths. BCSBmed will complement the EPSRC funded Bristol Centre for Complexity Sciences (BCCS).
The Saudi Arabian Government Department of Education has awarded PhD studentship funding for Osama Al-Ghamdi MSc for the project 'Genotype influences on reference ranges of clinical analytes' to be supervised by Dr Santi Rodriguez.
17 December 2008
Helen Lambert has been awarded funding under the ESRC-ICSSR India-UK Scholar Exchanges 2008 to develop research collaboration on 'The anthropology in and of public health'.
Kate Wood, Helen Lambert and Rachel Jewkes were awarded the Polgar Professional Paper Prize 2008 by the Society for Medical Anthropology, given to the best paper published in Medical Anthropology Quarterly during the preceding year, for their paper, Wood, K, Lambert, H., Jewkes R. 'Showing roughness in a beautiful way': talk about love, coercion, and rape in South African youth sexual culture, Medical Anthropology Quarterly 2007;21(3):277-300.
15 December 2008
Debbie Hawkings has been selected for the Faculty Award Recognising Support for Teaching and Learning, 2008-9. The prize will be presented at the University Learning and Teaching Exhibition on Thursday 8th January in the Arts Lecture Theatre 3, 21 Woodland Road, from 12 noon. Congratulations to Debbie.
25 November 2008
William Hollingworth, James Brennan, Rona Campbell, Susana Mancero, Chris Metcalfe and Lucy Biddle have been awarded £235,071 by the NIHR for a project entitled "Evaluating the effect of monitoring cancer patients using the distress thermometer on levels of distress and health service costs - a randomised controlled trial". The project will run for 30 months.
24 November 2008
Sarah Lewis, Debbie Lawlor, George Davey Smith, David Gunnell and Andy Ness have been awarded £184,336 by the Wellcome Trust entitled "Does mother's dietary intake during pregnancy influence brain development and therefore cognitive ability". The start date is 1 December 2008 and it will run for 36 months.
15 November 2008
Jonathan Sterne, Penny Whiting and colleagues have been awarded £646,000
by the MRC/NIHR Methodology Research Programme for a three-year research
programme entitled "Making diagnostic systematic reviews fit for purpose:
improving decision making in the NHS". The group will develop their
existing work on methodology for systematic reviews of diagnostic test
accuracy studies, which was established within the MRC Health Services
Research Collaboration.
3 November 2008
The Department of Social Medicine has been successful in receiving an award of £1,372,000 from the New Dynamic of Ageing programme (a cross-council initiative of the ESRC, MRC, BBSRC, AHRB) entitled; A Life Course Approach To Healthy Ageing: Capitalising On The Value Of UK Life Course Cohorts. This bid, which was led by Prof. Diana Kuh, Director of the MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing, involves Profs. Ben-Shlomo, Day, Martin, Davey Smith, Dr. Tilling (Social Medicine ) and Prof. Lightman (CSSB) in a multi-cohort cross disciplinary programme that will examine life course models of physical and cognitive ageing as well as psychological well-being. Specific work-packages will examine individual and area-based measures of social conditions, nutritional effects, gender differences as well as looking at biological measures such as telomeres, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and genetic markers of ageing. The project also involves researchers in UCL, Southampton, Edinburgh, Newcastle as well as international collaborations in North America and Europe.
28 October 2008
Debbie Lawlor and colleagues at the University of Bristol (Abigail Fraser, George Davey Smith and Jonathan Sterne), the Bristol Royal Infirmary (Mark Callaway), the University of Newcastle (Christopher Day) and the University of Glasgow (Naveed Sattar) have been awarded £523,605 from the MRC in response to their biomarkers grant call. The title of the project is "The utility of biomarkers for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in adolescents". It is due to start on 1st April 2009 and will run for 36 months.
20 October 2008
Press coverage of "Stressed pregnant women 'more likely to have children with asthma' by Raquel Granell, John Henderson and Yoav Ben-Shlomo. This was covered in the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, and the paper has been published in the Journal of Clinical Nursing.
13 October 2008
George Davey Smith, Scientific Director of Bristol University's Children of the 90s study and Professor of Clinical Epidemiology in the Department of Social Medicine has been elected a Foreign Associate of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies in the US.
1 October 2008
Press coverage of "Pathways to diagnosis for Black men and White men found to have prostate cancer: the PROCESS cohort study" written by Chris Metcalfe and colleagues S Evans, F Ibrahim, B Patel, K Anson, F Chinegwundoh, C Corbishley, D Gillatt, R Kirby, G Muir, V Nargund, PR Popert, R Persad and Y Ben-Shlomo on behalf of the PROCESS study group. This paper will be published in the British Journal of Cancer.26 September 2008
Matt Hickman and his colleagues John Macleod, George Davey Smith, Glyn Lewis and David Nutt have been awarded £519,844 from the MRC to collect information on substance use at the ALPSAC 17 clinic. The title is "Causal Pathways to Substance use and Dependence in Young People". It is due to start on 1st October 2008 and will run for 36 months.
24 September 2008
Jane Blazeby and co-applicants Jenny Donovan, Ali Heawood (Community Based Medicine), Tony Ades (Community Based Medicine), Nicky Welton (Community Based Medicine), Chris Metcalfe, Sian Noble and Athene Lane have been awarded £1,908,156 for five years from the Medical Research Council to establish The ConDuCT Hub. This is regional focus for high-quality, cutting-edge methodology research in randomised clinical trials. The ConDuCT Hub, (COllaboration and iNnovation in DifficUlt and complex randomised Controlled Trials) Hub will bring together and reinforce existing strengths in methodological research as well as fostering new lines of research. The Hub network with other trials Hub to form a national methodological platform for clinical trials research.
8 September 2008
Becky Gilbert and her colleagues Richard Martin, Chris Metcalfe, Athene Lane, Sarah Lewis, Jenny Donovan, William Fraser (Liverpool) have been awarded a Graduate Training Fellowship in Cancer Public Health and Epidemiology by Cancer Research UK. This is a large population-based case control study looking at associatiations of circulating vitamin A, D and E levels and their determinants with screen-detected prostate cancer.
5 September 2008
Press coverage of "Immediate Postnatal Growth is Associated with Blood Pressure in Young Adulthood" written by Yoav Ben-Shlomo and colleagues Anne McCarthy, Rachael Hughes, Kate Tilling, David Davies and George Davey Smith. The study was funded by the British Diabetic Associate and the British Heart Foundation.
3 September 2008
Press coverage of "Height and Prostate Cancer Risk: A Large Nested Case-Control Study (ProtecT) and Meta-analysis" by Luisa Zuccolo and colleagues Ross Harris, David Gunnell, Steven Oliver, Athene Lane, Michael Davis, Jenny Donovan, David Neal, Freddie Hamdy, Rebecca Beynon, Jelena Savovic and Richard Martin published in Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev.
1 September 2008
Canynge Hall's £4.1 million extension has now been completed and opened. It provides state-of-the-art teaching facilities (80-seat lecture theatre with break-out spaces; 40-seat computer room; board-style and small meeting rooms) as well as purpose-built office accommodation for staff expansion. The Department of Social Medicine now also occupies Oakfield House, with purpose-built space for ALSPAC fieldwork, BGEL and the ALSPAC laboratories, and office space for CAiTE and other department staff.
The opening ceremony included the 1st Stephen Frankel Lecture delivered by Professor Ezra Susser from Columbia University School of Public Health, New York. His lecture was entitled "Mental health, social justice and the global health agenda" and was held in one of the new lecture theatres.
11 August 2008
Professor George Davey Smith and Professor Shah Ebrahim have been awarded £4.5 million from the Wellcome Trust for a South Asia Centre for Population Health Research. It is due to start in October 2008 and will run for 5 years.
4 July 2008
Jane Blazeby and her colleagues Professor Mike Griffin (Newcastle), Dr Tom Crosby (Velindre, Cardiff), Dr Sara Brookes (Social Medicine, University of Bristol), Dr Alan Montgomery (Community Based Medicine, University of Bristol), Dr Will Hollingworth (Social Medicine, University of Bristol) and Professor Jenny Donovan (Social Medicine, University of Bristol) have been awarded £249,619 from the NIHR Research for Patient Benefit Scheme to undertake a feasibility randomised trial in oesophageal squamous cell cancer. This study will examine whether a full multi-centre trial is feasibile (comparing chemoradiotherapy with chemotherapy and surgery). It will also establish methods for recruiting patients into trials from multi-disciplinary team meetings and best methods for communicating outcomes to patients eligible for randomisation. It is due to run for 24 months starting in 2009.
17 June 2008
Marie-Jo Brion has been awared a 4 year Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship, beginning August 2008. She will be looking at maternal modifiable exposures and their relationship with offspring obesity, cognition and pyschological health. She will be working on the ALSPAC cohort and the Pelotas cohorts in Brazil. Marie-Jo will be supervised by George Davey Smith and Debbie Lawlor and will be based in the MRC CAiTE Centre.
27 May 2008
Athene Lane and Chris Metcalfe as PIs with co-investigators Kerry Avery, George Davey-Smith, Jenny Donovan, Freddie Hamdy (University of Sheffield), Jeff Holly, David Neal (Addenbrookes Hospital) and Richard Martin have been awarded £40,000 by CRUK. This grant is to conduct a feasibility study of a randomized trial of dietary prevention in men at risk of prostate cancer. The study will commence in autumn 2008 for 18 months.
15 May 2008
George Davey Smith with co-investigators Kirstin Newby, Andy Ness, Pauline Emmett, Kate Northstone and Li Benfield have been awarded $351,952 by the National Institute of Health. The title of the grant is "Milk, dairy products, and calcium intakes in children: prospective associations with body mass composition measured using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. Funding will start on 1 July 2008 for 3 years.
12 May 2008
Dr Sue Ring, Professor George Davey Smith, Dr Wendy McArdle and Professor Ian Day have been awarded £360,258 from the Wellcome Trust and Medical Research Council to manage cell line, DNA and genetics data resources for the 1958 Birth Cohort. Funding will start on 1st June 2008 for 2 years.
25 April 2008
Karen Dawe has been awarded an MRC/ESRC Interdisciplinary Post-doctoral Fellowship to examine the relationship between psychological stress, matrix metalloproteinases and healing in diabetic foot ulcers. It is a 2 year fellowship that starts in December 2008. Karen will be supervised by Kav Vedhara and John Tarlton.
14 April 2008
Professor Glynn Lewis as PI with Professor Peter Jones, Dr Paul Ramchandani, Professor Anita Thapar, Dr Charles Fernyhough, Professor Stephen Stansfeld, Professor Dieter Wolke, Professor Richard Bentall, Professor Lynne Murray, Professor George Davey Smith and Dr Barbara Maughan as co-applicants, have been awarded £648,184 by The Wellcome Trust. The title of the grant is 'Depression at 17:ALSPAC'. The grant is due to start 01/06/08 for 42 months.
Dr Jeffrey Gruen as PI with Dr Grier Page, Dr Haiying Meng, Dr Sally Shaywitz, Dr Bennett Shaywitz as co-applicants have been awarded £337,694 by the NIH. The title of the grant is Discovery of the 6p21.3 Reading Disability Gene'. The grant will run from 15/02/2008 until 31/01/2009.
10 April 2008
David Gunnell and Jenny Donovan have been appointed as NIHR Senior Investigators for a period of five years.
3 April 2008
Dr Helen Lambert has been awarded a University Research Fellowship to carry out and develop projects related to sexual health in India from August 2008 for 12 months.
22 March 2008
Jelena Savovic has been awarded the MRC Health Services and Health of the Public Research Fellowship for 3 years, starting in October 2008. The title of the project is: "Empirical investigation of sources of bias in randomised controlled trials, using a new Cochrane bias assessment tool".
21 March 2008
Abigail Fraser has been awarded a 4 year (2008-2012) MRC Special Training Fellowship in Health Services Research and Health of the Public. She will be looking at obstetric, lifestyle and genetic determinants of vascular and metabolic traits in women in early middle-age using data from ALSPAC. Abigail will be supervised by Professor Debbie Lawlor and Professor Frank Windmeijer and will be based in the MRC CAiTE Centre.
20 March 2008
Debbie Lawlor has been awarded £1,280,074 by the MRC to examine the public health importance of vitamin D. In particular to determine the causal effect of intrauterine and lifetime exposure to vitamin D on metabolic and vascular traits. The work is with co-investigators from the Univeristy of Bristol (George Davey Smith, David Evans, Nic Timpson, Philip Guthrie and Jon Tobias) the University of Liverpool (Bill Fraser) and the Univerisity of Glasgow (Naveed Sattar).
19 March 2008
George Davey Smith and co-investigators Thorkild Sorensen (Institute of Preventive Medicine, Denmark), Nicholas Timpson and David Evans from Social Medicine, Tim Frayling (Penninsula Medical School), Ellen Nohr (Aarhus University, Denmark), Paul Burton (University of Leicester), Mark Lathrop (Centre Nationale de Genotypage, France) and Andrew Hattersley (Penninsula Medical School) have been awarded £1,055,397 by the Wellcome Trust for a project entitled "Genome-wide association study of extreme obesity in young adults". It started on 1st March 2008.21 February 2008
John Macleod and Paddy Horner from Social Medicine, and Professor Neil Williams from Immunology, are involved in a research consortium led from Edinburgh awarded a strategy development grant by the UKCRC as part of its initiative to create centres of excellence around translational research into infectious disease. The aim of the consortium is to bring together immunological, clinical and epidemiological expertise around genital Chlamydia trachomatis infection in order to increase understanding of mechanisms of disease and inform more effective strategies to improve population sexual and reproductive health.
11 February 2008
Sarah Lewis and George Davey Smith from Social Medicine with Jean Golding (ALSPAC) and Ron Gray (National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, Oxford, PI), David Nutt (Community Based Medicine), Rosa Alati (University of Queensland, Australia), Elizabeth Draper (University of Leicester), Margaret Barrow (Leicester Royal Infirmary) and Robert Fraser (University of Sheffield) have been awarded £132,869 from the Wellcome Trust for a project studying the "Effects of prenatal alcohol consumption and alcohol metabolising genes and child growth and neurodevelopment in the ALSPAC study". It will run from March 2008 until March 2010.
29 January 2008
Caroline Trotter together with co-investigators Judith Mueller (AMP, Paris), Ray Borrow (HPA, Manchester) and Seydou Yaro (Centre Muraz, Burkina Faso) have been awarded £209,720 from the MRC, for an 18 month project on "Defining seroprevalence and correlates of protection for Neisseria meningitis group A in the African meningitis belt".
8 January 2008
Tom Gaunt and co-investigators Ian Day, Debbie Lawlor, Shah Ebrahim, Yoav Ben-Shlomo, Santiago Rodriguez and George Davey Smith have been awarded £163,757 by the British Heart Foundation, for a 3 year project on "Genetic risk factors for cardiovascular disease in the British Women's Heart and Health Study" using a 50K Vascular Disease SNP array (BHF PG/07/131/24254).
7 January 2008
The UKCRC has informed us that our proposal with Cardiff and Swansea for a Public Health Research Centre (DECIPHer - Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions for Public Health Improvement) is to receive £5 million funding for five years from September 2008. This will be led in Bristol by Rona Campbell with co-applicants Jenny Donovan, David Gunnell and Matt Hickman, and collaborators Yoav Ben-Shlomo, Debbie Lawlor, Will Hollingworth, John Macleod, Jonathan Sterne, Patrick Horner, Richard Martin, Sara Brookes, and also Ashley Cooper and Angie Page (Exercise, Nutrition and Health Sciences) and Tim Peters and Alan Emond (COBM).
1 January 2008
Dr Ian Baker (Honorary Reader in Public Health, Department of Social Medicine) has been made a Member of the British Empire (MBE) in 2008 New Year's Honours for his work for the Britain Nepal Medical Trust (www.britainnepalmedicaltrust.org.uk).
18 December 2007
Dr Mona Jeffreys (nee Okasha) has been appointed as Lecturer in Epidemiology to contribute to the developments in social and lifecourse epidemiology following the successful launch of the MRC CAiTE Centre. Mona will start here in mid-May, 2008.
12 December 2007
Matt Hickman and John Macleod with Roy Robertson (Edinburgh) have been successful with a study funded by the Chief Scientists Office, Scotland: Life course predictors and consequences of injecting drug use: a population-based case control study, £208,000 01/01/2008 to 31/12/2009.
10 December 2007
Carol Joinson, Glynn Lewis and Jon Heron have been awarded £81,706.31 from the ESRC. This will run from January 2008 until December 2009.
4 December 2007
Professor Debbie Lawlor and colleagues (Sattar N, Deanfield J, Tilling K, Day INM, Davey Smith G, Ness AR) have been successfully awarded £880k by British Heart Foundation to evaluate obstetric, lifestyle and genetic determinants of atherosclerosis, fat mass, insulin, glucose and lipid levels in early middle-age. The grant is a collaboration between Universities of Bristol, Glasgow and London and will provide funds to do a dedicated follow-up clinic of the mothers in ALSPAC (16 years after their index pregnancy) between 2008 and 2012.
3 December 2007
Professor Ian Day has been successful in obtaining a Benjamin Meaker 'fast-track' small grant to support a visit to the Department by Professor Dongfeng Gu from Beijing, probably early in 2008.
26 November 2007
Amanda Owen-Smith has been awarded a 1 year ESRC funded personal postdoctoral fellowship for disseminating the results of her PhD and conducting further qualitative research on implicit and explicit healthcare rationing, starting in June/July 2008.
14 November 2007
David Evans has been successful with an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council grant: "Australian Genome-wide Osteoporosis Association Study"
26 October 2007
Jonathan Sterne, Margaret May and Matthias Egger, together with an international team of collaborators (Dr Jordi Casabona, Dr Dominique Costagliola, Professor Antonella Arminio Monforte, Professor Francois Dabis, Dr Frank de Wolf, Dr Julia del Amo, Professor Gerd Fätkenheuer, Professor John Gill, Dr Jodie Guest, Dr Robert Hogg, Professor Amy Justice, Dr Mari Kitahata, Dr Fiona Lampe, Professor Bruno Ledergerber, Dr Amanda Mocroft, Professor Michael Saag, and Dr Timothy Sterling), have been awarded £627,144 by the Medical Research Council, to continue the work of the ART Cohort Collaboration (ART-CC) in monitoring and modelling the prognosis of HIV-infected patients in the era of effective antiretroviral therapy. For more information about ART-CC, please see www.art-cohort-collaboration.org. It will run from February 2008 until January 2011.
3 October 2007
Richard Martin has been awarded £147,971 along with Jenny Donovan, Freddie Hamdy, David Neal, Chris Metcalfe, Athene Lane, Sarah Lewis, George Davey Smith, David Smith and Helga Refsum from the World Cancer Rearch Fund (WCRF). Association of factors in the folate metabolic pathway with prostate cancer incidence and progression. It will run from March 2008 until February 2011.
1 October 2007
Eighteen research and academic staff today transferred from the MRC HSRC to the University. Four moved to COBM and 14 to Social Medicine. They will be full members of the University, but remaining on their previous terms and conditions of employment, as agreed under TUPE regulations, until March 2009.
The Wellcome Trust have awarded the Department of Social Medicine a four-year PhD programme in Molecular, Genetic and Lifecourse Epidemiology. Led by George Davey-Smith, Richard Martin, and Ian Day this award provides 3 PhD students per year for 6 years. Although only 21 of these highly coveted awards were made in the Wellcome Trust's latest funding round, a programme in Dynamic Cell Biology was also awarded to the Department of Biochemistry. The two programmes have planned to hold joint training sessions with the aim of fostering collaboration between the two Departments.
20 August 2007
Debbie Lawlor has been appointed as a member to the MRC's Health Services and Public Health Research Board.
15 August 2007
Richard Martin has been awarded $746,541 as part of $1.26 million muli-national grant from the US National Institutes for Health, along with co-investigators Matt Gillman (Harvard), Mike Kramer (McGill), Ying Foo (London), Jonathan Sterne and George Davey Smith: "Breastfeeding promotion RCT and child metabolic syndrome". The grant started in June 2007 and is for 3 years.
13 August 2007
Andy Ness and Sam Leary are part of a team that have been awarded a grant of around $2million over the next four years by the US National heart, lung and blood institute. The team will examine the association between physical activity, obesity and metabolic risk in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children.
31 July 2007
Ray Bartlett, Senior Porter in Canynge Hall, retired. Best wishes to Ray on a long and happy retirement.
18 July 2007
RfPB grant for Kav Vedhara and colleagues (R. Campbell, J. Weinman, C. Metcalfe, C. Dayan, P. Price, N. Cullum, A. Cooper): Development of a Cognitive-Behavioural Intervention to Reduce the Risk of Re-ulceration in Patients with Diabetes. £186,774 over 24 months.
16 July 2007
Bristol PCT has agreed to roll out the intervention developed in the ASSIST trial (PI: Rona Campbell) to prevent smoking to all Bristol secondary schools, starting in the Autumn. There will be a concurrent evaluation.
9 July 2007
Kerry Avery has been awarded an NIHR personal post-doctoral fellowship for 4 years (part-time) from 2008. The topic is: "Developing dietary interventions for prostate cancer - systematic reviews and investigations of dietary change.
Dr Sara Brookes has been awarded an NHS RfPB Programme grant: "Long-term outcome of men with lower urinary tract symptoms recruited to the CLasP randomised trial comparing transurethral resection of the prostate, conservative management and laser therapy" (co-applicants include Jenny Donovan and Tim Peters).
1 July 2007
Hannah Christensen has been awarded a Researcher Development Award from NCCRCD. She will do a PhD on 'Modelling the impact of vaccination targeted against group B meningococcal disease', supervised by Caroline Trotter and Matt Hickman.
25 June 2007
NHS HTA Programme awarded a grant of £14.4 million to complete recruitment and for the first five years of follow up for the ProtecT study from June 2008 to December 2013 (PI: Jenny Donovan; co-ordinator: Athene Lane).
19 June 2007
Judy Willis, ALSPAC, passed away.
1 June 2007
Small grant. Vedhara K, Lane JA, Blazeby JM, Hamdy FC, Donovan JL. An observational study to assess the prevalence and persistence of emotional distress in men undergoing screening for prostate cancer. Cancer Research UK. £39,744. 1 June 2007 - 31 May 2008.
1 June 2007
Professor Lars Vatten has been awarded a Visiting Chair in the Department to work particularly with Professor David Gunnell on the Norwegian population cohorts in particular HUNT, CONOR and the St Olafs birth cohort. His research interest is cancer epidemiology, with special interest in breast cancer; areas related to early and life course factors - particularly preeclampsia - causes and consequences for the mother and child, and more recently cardiovascular epidemiology, with an emphasis on the importance of metabolic factors, insulin resistance, etc.
24 May 2007
Len Miles, Senior Porter in Canynge Hall, passed away.
18 May 2007
It was announced by UKCRN that our joint proposal with Cardiff and Swansea (DECIPHer) has been shortlisted for the Public Health Centre of Excellence competition. Eight groups have been shortlisted and the full application deadline is 12th July 2007. This proposal is led by Rona Campbell.
17 May 2007
Dr Paddy Horner has been awarded a Walport Clinical Senior Lectureship.
24 April 2007
Dr Sara Brookes will progress to Senior Lecturer from 1st August 2007.
Dr Athene Lane will progress to Senior Research Fellow from 1st August 2007.
Dr Matthew Hickman will become Reader on 1st August 2007.
23 April 2007
Professor Jesper Lagergren has been awarded a Benjamin Meaker Visiting Professorship in the Department between September 2007 and August 2008, to work particularly with Professor Jane Blazeby on oesophageal cancer and other related conditions.