PPI Ignite Network at SPHeRE
Partner University
Structured Population Health, Policy, and Health-Services Research Education (SPHeRE) Programme
The SPHeRE Programme is Ireland’s national research PhD training programme for population health, policy and health services research (PHPHSR) and is funded by the Health Research Board in Ireland. SPHeRE means ‘Structured Population health, Policy and Health-services Research Education’.
The aim of the programme is to improve the health and wellbeing of groups or populations through high-quality research, and stakeholder engagement, addressing current and emerging issues in population health, health policy and health systems. The vision is to embed a culture of research in population health, health policy and health systems, grounded in principles of scientific inquiry and inclusion. PPI is embedded in the training provided by the SPHeRE Programme and forms part of every Scholar’s PhD project.
The SPHeRE programme is ‘structured’ because we want all our scholars to receive the same training, regardless of their previous experience. This is because improvements in population health and health service delivery can’t be achieved without co-operation across disciplines. SPHeRE connects scholars from diverse backgrounds and gives them a common language to work together.
We aim to develop the research leaders of tomorrow: a cadre of networked academics with a common training but diverse skills. SPHeRE Scholars carry out research of strategic importance to the Irish population. To do this we have developed a wide network of academics from disciplines such as biostatistics, economics, nursing, psychology, medicine, occupational therapy, sociology, speech and language therapy, management, geography and physiotherapy.
Our scholars bring a diverse range of life experiences to each class and many have worked as clinicians, managers or policymakers in the Irish health system. Their research is conducted to the highest standards and has been widely published in prestigious international journals.
THE TEAM
Who to talk to at SPHeRE
Prof Ali Khashan
SPHeRE Programme Co-Director
Ali is interested in research on determinants of maternal and neonatal adverse pregnancy outcomes and the impact of foetal and early life environment on short- and long-term health of the child. He is also interested in the impact of the pregnancy environment and pregnancy complications on the maternal long-term health. Ali has almost 15 years research experience in Perinatal and Psychiatric Epidemiology with specific expertise in interrogation of complex and large population-based datasets and advanced statistical methods. He has a global network of collaborations in the UK, Denmark Sweden, USA and New Zealand. Ali’s team has produced a series of original and highly cited research papers in high impact journals including PLoS Medicine, JAMA Psychiatry and the International Journal of Epidemiology, which collectively explore in detail causal associations between perinatal risk factors, such as in-utero exposure to stress, alcohol and Caesarean section and later child and adult morbidity. In addition, he has led a series of papers on the impact of pregnancy complications on maternal long-term health. In the past five years, Ali’s research expanded towards perinatal digital health in low-income settings. He led the development of the ULTRA App with Dr Simon Woodworth in UCC and Professor Chris Redman of COLAB (https://pregnancycolab.tghn.org/current-projects/). This App is currently being tested in healthcare settings in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania in collaboration with Professor Blandina Mmbaga of Kilimanjaro Clinical Research Institute (KCRI).
Katherine Walsh
Programme Manager for the SPHeRE PhD Programme
Katherine Walsh has been a part of the SPHeRE Programme team since 2020 and has been the Programme Manager since 2022. Katherine manages the SPHeRE team who work on the overall delivery of the SPHeRE Programme including teaching, workshop delivery, Scholar recruitment, budget management, annual funder reports and SPHeRE Network events.
Prior to this Katherine worked as the Assistant Registrar at NU London where she managed the Student and Academic Services Team and managed student data, registration, examinations, and collaboration across departments such as quality, finance, and admissions. Katherine managed inter-institutional collaborations and spearheaded impactful projects.
During her time studying in UCC Katherine’s research focused on children’s rights, including child labour in US agriculture and statelessness and human trafficking in Thailand.