Meet the Committee
The current Executive Committee includes:
Chair: Prof Nick Hulbert-Williams, Edge Hill University
Biography coming soon!
Treasurer: David Wright, University of Southampton
David Wright is a Senior Research Fellow at the Macmillan Survivorship Research Group (MSRG), University of Southampton. He has periodically worked in cancer survivorship research over the last 18 years. A social scientist by background, David first worked for the Group as a Research Fellow, managing the Macmillan Listening Study. This influential project was the first national research prioritisation exercise involving people affected by cancer and set the agenda for cancer survivorship research. Since then, he has worked as a freelance researcher for different clients including the University of Oxford, the Stroke Association, the NIHR Evaluation, Trials and Studies Coordinating Centre and the European Commission.
In 2018, he returned to the MSRG, working on studies that seek to enhance the understanding of recovery and self-management of people living with and beyond cancer, and evaluating interventions designed to support self-management. David is also responsible for managing evaluations of workforce development and interventions designed to support personalised care. He also has extensive experience of patient and public involvement in research and values working with people affected by cancer as equal partners in the research process.
You can email David on: treasurer@bpos.org
Secretary: Details pending
Media representative: Rachel Starkings
Rachel is a Research Fellow within the Sussex Health Outcomes Research and Education in Cancer group (SHORE-C) at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School. She has been involved with both qualitative and quantitative projects, such as the development and validation of two new scales to capture the impact of cancer for patients and informal caregivers. Rachel has an interest in psychological pre-habilitation and rehabilitation, having previously worked on a project assessing the biological and psychological impacts of relaxation interventions for women with breast cancer. Rachel is also involved with the assessment of training interventions for healthcare professionals discussing concepts of risk with patients.
Rachel completed her undergraduate degree at the Harriet L Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University, with a double major in Psychology and Political Science. She went on to complete her MSc in General Psychology at the University of Plymouth. Before becoming a Research Fellow, Rachel worked as a Senior Clinical Trial Coordinator at the Royal Marsden. She managed both the Head, Neck and Thyroid group as well as the Renal and Melanoma firm and was involved in numerous clinical trials, both academic and commercial in nature.
You can email Rachel on: website@bpos.org
Psychology Rep: Debbie Cavers, Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh (2021 – 2024)
Debbie Cavers is interested in qualitative research exploring the lived experience of the illness journey, across the cancer care continuum and in the context of additional long term conditions, from cancer screening and early detection, through survivorship to end of life care. This work draws on psychological and sociology theory for a behavioural science approach to understanding health behaviours and informing interventions and service developments to promote optimal patient-centred care.
Debbie is currently working on a CSO funded study to pilot targeted lung health checks in the Scottish population. This involves the design and implementation of a pilot study evaluating the feasibility and acceptability of low dose CT scanning to detect lung cancer earlier and improve survival.
Nursing Rep: Lynn Calman and Jo Armes (2019 – 2022)
Lynn Calman is a Principal Research Fellow and Deputy Director of Macmillan Survivorship Research Group at the University of Southampton. The Macmillan funded MSRG research programme, is designed to inform the development of more efficient and effective services to support survivors and enhance their recovery. The MSRG programme has two themes – understanding recovery and self-management following primary treatment and developing and testing interventions to support self-management. The team are running large cohort studies of cancer survivors (CREW, HORIZONS) to understand health and wellbeing of cancer patients from diagnosis and across the life course and have developed online resources and decision aids such as RESTORE to support confidence to manage symptoms and problems. Lynn also leads her own programme of research to understand the needs of people living with treatable but not curable cancer. She has a long history of working closely with people affected by cancer as Research Partners in the development and conduct of research projects.
Lynn is an adult and mental health nurse. She undertook her PhD at the University of Edinburgh (2005) and joined MSRG in 2012 after completing an MRC funded post-doctoral fellowship in health services research and health of the public at the University of Manchester; to develop an intervention for the follow-up of lung cancer patients after primary treatment. She has a particular interest in living with and beyond lung cancer and is a member of the NCRI Lung Cancer Group.
Jo Armes is a Registered Nurse and is currently Professor of Cancer Care & the Lead for Digital Health at the University of Surrey. In 2000 she was awarded a CRUK Nursing Fellowship to undertake a PhD at King’s College London in which she developed and tested a behavioural intervention for cancer-related fatigue. Her research programme aims to enhance supportive care provided to patients in order to help optimise the benefits of treatment whilst living as well as possible with the effects of the disease and consequences of its treatment. She has considerable experience of developing complex interventions and evaluating their outcomes through mixed method research designs. Most recently she has been involved in developing and testing digital health interventions, including the EU-funded eSMART study.