Meet the team
Dr Mark Adley
Lead Researcher
Mark has a background as a frontline worker and manager in prison and community drug and alcohol services, and as a primary care social prescriber. His research focuses on health services, and the inclusion of groups who have been made marginalised.
Mehru-Nisa Shah
Public Involvement Lead
Mehru-Nisa is Senior Development and Haref Allies officer for Connected Voice, and is passionate about improving health and wellbeing inequalities experienced by ethnically marginalised communities.
Dilesh Popat
Public Involvement Lead
Dilesh is National Diverse Communities Team Lead for Turning Point, specializing in building culturally appropriate pathways to recovery, and joint founder of Brown Girl in a Bottle, whose mission is to break the silence surrounding trauma and addiction within South Asian communities.
Prof. Amy O’Donnell
Lead Mentor
Amy is Professor of Applied Health and Social Care Research at Newcastle University. Her research focuses on improving health and social care systems for people with multiple long-term conditions, with particular expertise in co-occurring alcohol and mental health problems.
Dr Zeb Sattar
Project Mentor
Zeb is Assistant Professor of Public Health at Northumbria University, specialising in ethnic health inequalities, religion, and culture in health and social care, with a focus on South Asian and Muslim communities.
Dr William McGovern
Project Mentor
William is an Associate Professor at Northumbria University. His research focuses on substance use and recovery and he has over 30 years’ experience as a drug and alcohol practitioner, public involvement lead, researcher, academic and community activist.
Dr Rebecca Hunter
Realist Advisor
Rebecca is an Assistant Professor of Health and Social Care Evaluation and Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow at Northumbria University. Coming to research from clinical practice in chronic pain, she specialises in realist methodology, applying it to navigate complexity in health and care systems.
Dr Emma Hock
Realist Advisor
Emma is an experienced public health researcher within the School of Medicine and Population Health at Sheffield University. She has extensive experience in evidence synthesis, with a long-standing track record of leading and contributing to systematic reviews and realist syntheses across a wide range of public health, clinical and social care topics.
Dr Hassan Awan
Academic Advisor
Dr Hassan Awan is an NIHR Clinical Lecturer in Primary Care at Keele University with experience in engaging underserved communities in health research. His work combines clinical practice as a GP in a diverse urban setting with academic expertise in co-producing research with communities traditionally excluded from health research.
Dr Sarah Fox
Academic Advisor
Sarah is a Senior Lecturer in women’s substance use in the School of Nursing and Public Health, Manchester Metropolitan University. Her work focuses on women affected by domestic abuse and South Asian women who use alcohol, with a strong emphasis on lived experience and cultural context.
Prof. Harry Sumnall
Academic Advisor
Harry is a Professor in Substance Use in the School of Psychology at Liverpool John Moores University. He undertakes and collaborates on a wide range of research on drug related topics, including current research into stigma towards people who use drugs. He is a current Member of the UK Government Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), and a founding Steering Committee Member of the UK Anti-Stigma Network.