Julia Lawton
Professor of Health and Social Science
- Usher Institute
- College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine
Contact details
Address
- Street
-
Centre for Population Health Sciences
Usher Institute, Usher Building
The University of Edinburgh
5-7 Little France Road
Edinburgh BioQuarter ‒ Gate 3 - City
- Edinburgh
- Post code
- EH16 4UX
Background
Julia Lawton is Professor of Health & Social Science at the Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh and leads the Edinburgh Qualitative Health Research Group (EQual). She has a background in social anthropology, medical sociology and applied qualitative health research. She moved to Edinburgh in 2001 after completing a PhD and Research Fellowship at the University of Cambridge. Since moving to Edinburgh, she has successfully developed and leads an internationally-recognised research programme. This programme broadly coheres around people’s experiences of living with and self-managing complex and chronic health conditions, along with healthcare professionals’ experiences of supporting disease self-management. Professor Lawton has a firm commitment to delivering high-quality qualitative research of direct relevance to improving healthcare delivery, patient experience and addressing health inequalities. As well as conducting exploratory qualitative research to support intervention development, Professor Lawton offers expertise in undertaking process evaluations of complex healthcare interventions.
Qualifications
- PhD, Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge
- BA, Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, Class 1
Research summary
- Understanding barriers and facilitators to self-managing diabetes, along with other complex and chronic health conditions
- Exploring the use of closed-loop systems and other innovative health technologies to support diabetes self-management, improving quality-of-life
- Understanding and addressing inequities in access to health care and health technologies in seldom heard and underserved communities
- Exploring and addressing barriers to recruiting into clinical trials
- Using qualitative methods to inform development and refinement of complex healthcare interventions to support people living chronic health conditions
- Undertaking process evaluations of complex healthcare interventions (e.g., structured education programmes) to help establish whether interventions have worked as intended (i.e., in line with program theory) and inform decision-making about roll out in routine clinical care