Health and Social Psychology
The Health and Social Psychology Research Group conducts world-leading research which focuses on understanding and changing health behaviours, effects of stress on health and behaviour, patient safety and use of medical technologies, biological influences on health, understanding the development of wellbeing and resilience, stereotyping and performance outcomes and examines the effectiveness of psychological interventions for physical and mental health.
Members
Professor Mark Conner
Dr Andrew Prestwich
Professor Mitch Waterman
Professor Rebecca Lawton
Dr Chris Keyworth
Dr Russell Hutter
Dr Siobhan Hugh-Jones
Professor Daryl O’Connor
Dr. Keven Joyal-Desmarais
Dr. Jonathan Benn
Prof. Pam Birtill
Dr. Jenny Retzler
Dr. Mei Yee Tang
Dr, Emmanuele Tidoni
Ongoing Projects
Increasing bowel cancer screening uptake in England
Every year in the UK 42,000 people are diagnosed and more than 16,000 people die from bowel cancer. Screening increases the chances of identifying bowel cancer early leading to better outcomes. Despite this, four out of every ten people in the UK decline to complete screening and screening rates are even lower in some groups (e.g., men, those from deprived areas & from ethnic minority groups). Therefore, work within the Health and Social Psychology Research Group, led by Daryl O’Connor and Mark Conner and funded by Cancer Research UK, is aimed at increasing bowel cancer screening rates in the North of England. This research proposes to test the effectiveness of behaviour change interventions to increase bowel screening uptake and to tailor them for use in individuals from ethnic minority and other underserved groups. These interventions are brief, simple to complete, and offer the possibility of improving rates of screening, thereby increasing cancers being detected early to promote better outcomes due to earlier treatment.
Patient Safety
Bradford Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust and the University of Leeds lead one of six Patient Safety Research Collaborations (PSRC) in England, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research. The Director of the PSRC is Rebecca Lawton (Professor, Psychology of Healthcare) and key members of the team are Jon Benn and Ruth Baxter from School of Psychology. Other collaborators include Chris Keyworth, Daryl O'Connor and Mark Conner and the centre involves theme leads from across the entire Faculty of Medicine and Health. With four themes of work, all with a strong psychological underpinning, this Research Centre delivers applied research that makes care safer for patients by identifying, measuring, understanding and reducing unsafe care, addressing workforce wellbeing, developing interventions that support patient involvement in their care, working with policy makers to evaluate and influence policy and supporting patient safety by reducing low-value care. Our influence on patient safety is regional, national and international. To learn more about the work we do visit Yorkshire and Humber Patient Safety Research Collaboration.
Participatory and Arts-Based Approaches to Youth Mental Health
Funded by flagship awards by UKRI, a team from the Health and Social Psychology Research Group are co-delivering participatory, arts-based research to advance our understanding of, and responses to, poor youth mental health. Project Attune brings together diverse creative-arts, digital and health experts to investigate how adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can affect adolescents’ mental health with the aim of developing new approaches to prevention and care. The Leeds team (led by Siobhan Hugh-Jones) are driving the national co-design and evaluation of art-based, trauma-informed public health responses to ACE-affected young people (see film overview of Project Attune).
Project Create aims to Create Research Ecologies to ADvance Transdiscipinary Learning (UKRI £1.2m, led by Professor Paul Cooke, University of Leeds). Within our research group Prof. Siobhan Hugh-Jones) is leading work tackling major research barriers to youth, scientists and arts researchers working together, with the ultimate goal of understanding the benefits of art-based approaches for youth mental health.
Colleagues in the Health and Social Psychology Research Group are members of and/or work closely with the Bradford Institute for Health Research, the Yorkshire Quality and Safety Research Group and the School’s Laboratory for Stress and Health Research (STARlab).