Public Health Research Team

What We Do and Why

Our aim is to contribute towards improving the health of the Grampian population through supporting the continuing development of an evidence-based planning and evaluative culture within NHS Grampian and the Health and Social Care Partnerships. We provide evaluation support to help you to measure the impact of your programmes or services and demonstrate their value. Our specific objectives are to:

  • Actively promote and support the evaluation of services, service improvements, and interventions
  • Working towards ensuring that evidence from evaluations is routinely used to inform the development of policy, strategy and practice
  • Build capacity for evaluation and research among colleagues

By evaluating your work, you’ll know whether you are focusing your resources and budget in the right areas and whether your services and interventions are achieving the outcomes you want. Monitoring and evaluation supports ongoing evidence-informed decision-making about the future direction of services.

Who we are, our skills and experience

Our team sits within Health Intelligence – have a look at our profiles below.

Dr Fiona Murray is a Public Health Researcher with NHS Grampian. She has previously worked in health promotion and health improvement. She is now based in the Health Intelligence Team and her current work focuses mainly on child and maternal health.

Jacqui Bell is a Public Health Researcher with nearly 20 years’ experience working in research and evaluation at the University of Aberdeen. Since joining NHS Grampian in 2015 she has been primarily engaged in work with the Sexual Health and Blood Borne Viruses Managed Care Network: including needs assessment, service review, monitoring indicators and evaluating interventions. As MCN commitments allow, she is also involved in other areas of Public Health, conducting, promoting and advising evaluations throughout Grampian.

Andrea Gilmartin is a Public Health Researcher with NHS Grampian and a UK Public Health Registered Practitioner. Since joining the NHS she has worked in Health Improvement, Aberdeen City Health & Social Care Partnership and Health Intelligence, covering a wide range of topics including; Health Needs Assessments, Alcohol and Drugs, Palliative & End of Life Care, Mental Health, Child Health and Community Appointment Days. Andrea is also involved in other areas of Public Health: conducting, promoting and advising on evaluations, utilising both qualitative and quantitative methods, throughout Grampian.

Shravya is a trained medical doctor who joined NHSG and the Health Determinant Research Collaborative Aberdeen (HDRCA) in July 2024. She holds a Masters in Public Health and is currently pursuing a PhD in ‘Public Health and Social Science’ at Glasgow Caledonian University, which focuses on measuring public preferences and deliberation to address health inequalities. Shravya has previously worked with Aberdeenshire Health and Social Care Partnership, exploring the impact of COVID-19 on unpaid carers and support workers. She has contributed to the evaluation of the “Warm Home Prescription” project and played a key role in HDRCA’s broader evaluation efforts. She has developed evaluation training videos for ACC Learn, and currently conducts research advice drop-in sessions to support ACC staff with research and evaluation guidance. 

You’ll see we have a wide range of evaluation and research experience in both academic and non-academic settings; a great asset in helping you to evaluate whatever you need. Specific skills you may find useful include:

  • Extensive experience in designing, conducting and analysing research and evaluation, using both quantitative and qualitative methods
  • Quantitative and qualitative data analysis, including the use of software packages like NVivo and statistical packages like SPSS and Stata
  • Conducting literature searches and critically appraising primary and secondary research
  • Using a range of needs assessment approaches

See examples of our work here.

Who we work with

We work in partnership with stakeholders, promoting joint ownership of any projects we are involved in. We work with the Health and Social Care Partnerships, Public Health Leads and Coordinators, Primary Care, Acute Services and Third Sector organisations.