Cancer and pregnancy research group
Start date
08 February 2024End date
OngoingOverview
We are an interdisciplinary team focused on researching and improving care for women and families affected by a cancer diagnosis during pregnancy. Our team spans health sciences, medicine, and social/behavioural sciences, integrating statistics, data science and qualitative methods.
Aims and objectives
We aim to improve experience and outcomes for people affected by co-existent cancer and pregnancy.
Our group uses data driven insights to understand experiences of diagnosis, cancer treatment and maternity care, and outcomes for mother’s, infants and wider families. We aim to use these insights to develop new innovations to multidisciplinary team to provide optimal evidence-based care and to support families affected by cancer and pregnancy.
We involve women and family members in our work to ensure we are researching what matters most.
Team
Principal Investigators
Dr Jenny Harris
Senior Lecturer in Cancer Care and Health Statistics
Biography
Jenny is a Senior Lecturer in Cancer Care and Health Statistics the School of Health Sciences at the University of Surrey. Her on-going programme of work focuses on optimising health care delivery and outcomes based on data-driven approaches often informed by psychological and behavioural insights.
Jenny has a particular interest in psychosocial care for people living with cancer and using data driven insights to improve multidisciplinary teamworking and quality of care, patient experience and clinical outcomes.
Her recent work has been focused on the intersection of cancer and maternity care, and exploring how insights from cancer health services research might be adapted and implemented for other conditions or areas of care, notably maternity and obstetric care (TEAM-QI), peripheral artery disease and veterinary medicine.
Methodological interests include predictive risk modelling incorporating questionnaires, surveys and questionnaire design and validation, mixed-methods evaluations of complex interventions (quasi-experimental designs, feasibility studies, RCTs) and real-world implementation of electronic Patient Reported Outcome and Experience Measures. Jenny is passionate about involving patients and the public in research including studies using advanced statistical methods.
Professor Emma Ream
Professor, Director of Health Sciences Research
Biography
Emma Ream is a Professor of Supportive Cancer Care and Director of Health Sciences Research. She is a Registered Nurse with a research career spanning 30 years. She qualified in 1990 having undertaken a BSc in Nursing with Economics at St Bartholomew's Hospital in conjunction with City University, London. She worked in general and oncology nursing before moving into academia at King's College London. She was awarded her MSc in Nursing from King's College London (1995) and later her doctorate (2002) for her work developing and evaluating an intervention for cancer-related fatigue.
Emma held various research and teaching posts at King's College London before being conferred the title Professor of Supportive Cancer Care in 2009. At King's College London she led the Supportive Cancer Care Research Group and provided strategic leadership in the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery for cancer and palliative nursing education and research.
She moved to the University of Surrey in 2015 to take up position as Director of Health Sciences Research. Her research interests include symptom trajectories during and following cancer treatment, digital health, cancer in pregnancy, support needs of families when a parent has cancer that can't be cured, and cancer inequalities.
Co-investigators
Professor Jo Armes
Professor of Cancer Care and Lead for Digital Health
Biography
Jo qualified as a Registered Nurse in 1985 at University College Hospital, London. She worked clinically in haematology and medical/clinical oncology before moving to St Bartholomew's & Homerton Hospitals to undertake psycho-oncology research. On completion of a BSc in Nursing Studies at The University of Hull she took up a research post at St Christopher's Hospice, London. In 2000 she was awarded a CRUK Nursing Fellowship to undertake a PhD at King's College London, during which she developed and tested a behavioural intervention for cancer-related fatigue. Subsequently she held a number of academic posts and led the Supportive Cancer Care Research Group in the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery at King's College London. Jo joined the School of Health Sciences at the University of Surrey in 2017 as Reader and Lead for Digital Health. She also leads Digital Innovation theme for the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration for Kent Surrey & Sussex (ARC KSS). Jo has considerable expertise in clinical trials of complex interventions, including digital health interventions, mixed methods and experience based co-design methods.
Professor Faith Gibson
Professor of Child Health and Cancer Care
Biography
Faith is a Registered Nurse, qualifying in 1981, and then in 1986 completing a second qualification as Registered Children's Nurse: both qualifications gained whilst at the University Hospital in Nottingham. During 1981-1986 Faith worked in a number of adult cancer units and a hospice, and completed her Oncology Training at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London. From 1986 to date Faith has worked at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust (GOSH), undertaking a range of clinical, educational and research roles. This period includes joint appointments with UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health and London South Bank University (LSBU). She was awarded her MSc from the University of Surrey (1984), and later her doctorate from London South Bank University (2001) for her working defining generalist and specialist children's nursing.
Since completing her doctorate Faith has held a number of research posts, and was conferred as Clinical Professor of Children's and Young People's Cancer Care in 2009. This was a joint appointment between GOSH and LSBU. Faith continues with her joint appointment at GOSH in the role of Deputy Chief Nurse for Research, Nursing and Allied Health.
Faith has a research career spanning nearly 20 years. She is internationally recognised for her research in children's and young people's cancer care. This work was recognised in 2007 when she was granted Fellow of the Royal College of Nursing, in 2018 awarded Life Time Achievement Award by the International Society of Paediatric Oncology, and in 2020 conferred Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing.
Dr Agnieszka Lemanska
Senior Lecturer in Health Data Science
Biography
Agnieszka first trained as a pharmacist and graduated with MSc in Pharmacy in 2005. She then studied for her PhD in Statistics and Machine Learning at the Centre for Chemometrics, University of Bristol (scholarship funded by GlaxoSmithKline). She has been working as a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Surrey since 2012, where she leads research and supports teaching activities.
Agnieszka holds a joint appointment. Since 2018 she has been seconded for 50% of her time to the Department of Data Science at the National Physical Laboratory. NPL is UK's measurement institute and Agnieszka's role as Senior Scientist is to contribute to NPL's capability for improving the quality of healthcare measurements and digitalisation of healthcare data.
In 2021 to 2022, Agnieszka undertook MRC funded secondment to the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science, University of Oxford delivering research within the OpenSafely platform.
Professor Agnieszka Michael
Professor in Oncology , Consultant Medical Oncologist, Medical Director of Surrey CTU
Biography
Professor Agnieszka Michael MRCP PhD specialises in the field of Oncology, she is a researcher and a medical oncology consultant at the Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust. Professor Michael specialises in ovarian and renal cancers as well as immunotherapy trials. She qualified in medicine at the University of Wroclaw and undertook general medical and oncology training at the London Medical Oncology rotation , in St George's Hospital, London , Royal Marsden Hospital and Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital. She was awarded a PhD for research in Cancer Immunotherapy by St George's, University of London, and continues to contribute to this field of research. Throughout her career Professor Michael has worked in the cancer clinical trials' field, including early phase studies with novel immunotherapy agents, gene therapy and cancer vaccines as well as international multi-centre phase III and IV studies, as a Chief investigator and a local Principal Investigator. Professor Michael is a Medical Director for Surrey Clinical Trials Unit and a Clinical Lead for National Ovarian Cancer Audit, as well as a deputy Chair of a Gynaecological Oncology Research subgroup hosted by National Cancer Research Institute.
Research themes
Find out more about our research at Surrey: