Dr Hannah Harrison was awarded an NIHR Development and Skills Enhancement Award in October 2020

Hannah, Research Associate at the Prevention Group, aims to use her Fellowship to further develop her skills in risk model development and public health modelling.

Building on previous work identifying and validating risk models for the development of kidney cancer, Hannah will be modelling the impact of using models to identify individuals with a high risk of kidney cancer as part of a stratified screening programme.

She will also be investigating the role that genetic risk factors could play in the identification of high risk individuals.

Using the outcomes of this modelling, she will then identify the key factors of successful models and use this to inform the development of a new model for kidney cancer development in the UK Biobank cohort.

Learn more about Hannah’s research and follow her on Twitter

 

Dr Juliet Usher-Smith was awarded an NIHR Advanced Fellowship (2021-2024) in November 2020

Juliet is University Lecturer in General Practice, also in the Prevention Group. Her programme of research is titled ‘Developing a strategy for implementation of risk stratification into bowel cancer screening’.

The programme builds on previous work that Juliet has led, that has shown that risk models are better than age-stratification alone at identifying those at greatest risk of developing bowel cancer.

Her work has shown that using this information to determine age at first screening invitation could improve clinical outcomes and cost-effectiveness without increasing resources.

During the newly awarded Fellowship, Juliet will explore the social and ethical implications of introducing risk stratification throughout the bowel cancer screening programme, the acceptability to the public, and the health system requirements. Juliet will use methods new to this area, including community juries and discrete choice experiments. She will also work with the PHG Foundation to bring together experts in the field to establish the state-of-the-science and the future research and policy requirements for incorporating risk stratification into bowel cancer screening programmes.

See more about Juliet and her work and follow her on Twitter