UKRI appoints Mental Health Networks Impact and Engagement Coordinator – UK Research and Innovation

09/10/2019

Professor Elaine Fox

Professor Elaine Fox, of the University of Oxford, has been appointed as UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Mental Health Networks Impact and Engagement Coordinator.

In her role, Professor Fox will encourage and facilitate engagement with and across the eight Mental Health Networks established by UKRI with £8 million of funding.

Professor Fox, who is Professor of Psychology and Affective Neuroscience at Oxford, has been awarded a £450,000 grant over 40 months, and will help to facilitate collaboration between the networks and maximise their impact.

Professor Fox said: “I am absolutely delighted with this appointment and look forward to working with the eight Mental Health Networks to help shine a light onto the importance of mental health research.

“If we want a world in which mental health problems can be effectively treated and prevented we will need highly collaborative research teams bringing together expertise from many disciplines, including expertise that comes from lived experience with mental health problems.

“I have put together an exciting coordination team from the McPin Foundation, Mental Elf, Sixth Sense Media, and my own research group in Oxford with the aim of working closely with the networks to develop a national campaign that will highlight Why Mental Health Research Matters.”

The eight Mental Health Networks are embracing a collaborative ethos, bringing together researchers from a wide range of disciplines, including health, medicine, biology, social sciences, humanities and environmental sciences, as well as insights from charity workers, health practitioners and people with lived experience of mental health problems.

They will progress mental health research in themes such as the profound health inequalities for people with severe mental ill health, social isolation, youth and student mental health, domestic and sexual violence, and the value of community assets. Professor Fox and her team will work alongside the networks to help to raise the public profile and quality of mental health research in the UK.

Find out more about the UKRI Mental Health Networks.

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