The Project Team

Principal Investigator

Professor Kamaldeep Bhu is a psychiatric epidemiologist who has led the team preparing the compendium of mental health outcomes, and chaired the Access Engagement sub-panel of the NICE guideline update on Schizophrenia. He is a member of EU and International networks on migration and mental health, ethnicity and health, and cultural psychiatry; he works with community agencies and charities promoting health and well being in populations and in specialist psychiatric care.

Dr. Rose McCabe is a senior lecturer at at the Unit for Social and Community Psychiatry. Her research focuses on identifying effective communication and improving communication to optimise the experience of treatment and patient outcome. Relevant current projects include studies of how suicide risk assessment is conducted; communication in treatment and its association with patient outcome, and communication skills training to improve communication about psychosis.

Research Fellow: Dr. Rabeea’h Waseem Aslam has a background in medicine, and her work in economic evaluation of mental health policy at London School of Economics culminated in change of UK health policy in 2011. She was also a contributor to the Royal College of Psychiatrist Policy Briefing on the Parity of Esteem between mental and physical health services. Her research interests lie at the intersection of social exclusion, transnational migration, community engagement, cultural psychiatry, health services research and policy. This was reflected, amongst other projects, in the establishment and management of health camps for internally displaced people in Pakistan.

Professor Ala Szczepura is Professor of Health Services Research at Warwick Medical School. She has over twenty years experience in policy and evaluative research in health care. In 2001 she was awarded a grant to establish a UK Centre for Evidence in Ethnicity, Health and Diversity (CEEHD) jointly at Warwick and De Montfort University, as part of the ESRC’s evidence-based policy and practice initiative. In 2004, CEEHD was appointed to develop a Specialist Library for Ethnicity and Health for the NHS Knowledge Management Programme. In 2009, the Collection became part of a new initiative NHS Evidence under the direction of NICE.

Professor Scott Weich is a psychiatric epidemiologist with a track record of research into determinants and outcomes of mental disorders. His research includes investigation of all forms of inequality in rates of the most common mental disorders. He has collaborated on several national surveys of psychiatric morbidity in the UK, including EMPIRIC – the largest study of mental disorder in ethnic minorities in the UK. He was lead investigator on a qualitative study of the experiences of users of acute mental health services in a deprived, multi-ethnic inner city community, and (with KB and SS) on the evaluation of the national Focused Implementation Site (FIS) roll-out – a key element of the Delivering Race Equality (DRE) programme.

Professor Swaran Singh is expert in early intervention services for people with schizophrenia and completed a systematic review of the mental health act and ethnicity. He has studied transitions from child to adult services, and hold and NIHR programme grant on ethnicity and mental health, and pathways to care.

Professor Mark Johnson has 30 years of experience in conducting research into ethnicity and health issues, and specialises in community/user-linked research approaches. He is the Specialist Advisor on ethnicity and equality issues for NHS Evidence (NICE), and will also manage the linkages with Afiya Trust and other community-based user perspectives, and the ‘research user’ community of practitioners (including the 560-strong membership of the electronic community of practice) which will be used to locate work in progress and unpublished studies).

Mr. Rampaul Chamba is Trustee at the Afiya Trust. In 2008 he contributed to Afiya's response to the consultation on the Draft Revised Mental Health Act Code of Practice. The Afiya Trust is a national second tier organisation with an England-wideremit to reduce inequalities in health and social care provision for racialised communities. Over the years, they have focused on mental health, cancer, stroke and other health issues, on service user and carer concerns, and on promoting the public health and well-being of England’s diverse communities. The Afiya Trust host several networks that bring together users of health and social care services, carers, professionals, academics and community members who are concerned about health and social care provision and want to see positive changes. Through their networks they have access to over 1000 individuals and organisations, and their opinions and insights inform their work and policy.