KK has supervised over 20 doctoral students at the University of Birmingham. Important examples of publications arising from their theses include:
Jokhio AH, Winter HR, Cheng KK. An intervention involving traditional birth attendants and perinatal and maternal mortality in Pakistan. N Engl J Med. 2005;352:2091-9. (This was one of the first research papers from Pakistan published in the New England Journal of Medicine. In helping to bring about a change of emphasis from a solely health centre one to multiple delivery approaches (i.e. in communities as well as health facilities), the findings have contributed towards the strategies towards two Millenium Development Goals.)
Yin P, Jiang CQ, Cheng KK, Lam TH, Lam KL, Miller MR, Zhang WS, Thomas NG, Adab P. Passive smoking exposure and risk of COPD among adults in China: The Guangzhou Biobank Cohort Study. Lancet 2007; 370:751-7. (selected by the International Advisory Board of The Lancet as one of the research papers worldwide “that make the greatest potential contribution to clinical research” in 2007)
Aveyard P, Cheng KK, Almond J, Sherratt E, Lancashire R, Lawrence T, Griffin C, Evans O. Cluster randomised controlled trial of expert system based on the transtheoretical (“stages of change”) model for smoking prevention and cessation in schools. British Medical Journal 1999; 319:948-53. (This was the first fast track article published by the British Medical Journal since its establishment in 1840. The paper has played a major role in the practice of smoking prevention in schools in this country and further afield.)
Zhang D, Yin P, Freemantle N, Jordan R, Zhong N, Cheng KK. An assessment of the quality of randomised controlled trials conducted in China. Trials 2008;9:22.