Dr Haliyya Bakare is a medical doctor and a public health researcher. Her clinical training spanned the Caribbean, the USA, and the UK across diverse healthcare systems, shaping her interest in how healthcare systems influence diagnosis, access to care, research participation, and treatment. She is a Research Fellow for the LifeArc Centre for Acceleration of Rare Disease Trials (ARDT). Her work addresses the under-representation of socio-economically disadvantaged and ethnically minoritised people living with rare diseases in clinical trials, focusing on barriers and facilitators to inclusive research. She works to generate evidence and co-develop best practice frameworks to improve access to trials and treatment.
Prior to joining ARDT, Dr Bakare worked across applied public health research, service evaluation, and evidence synthesis. As a Research Associate at the University of Warwick, she led a participatory service evaluation using the Nominal Group Technique for priority setting and to identify solutions to improve maternity care for Black, African, Caribbean and mixed-Black families in Coventry and Warwickshire.
Building on this work, she co-developed a toolkit for community-based Nominal Group Technique and trauma-informed facilitation to support participatory and co-produced research practice. She also undertook research on the Supporting Engagement and Access to Maternity Services (SEAMS), a poverty-proofing maternity care study which sought to better understand the barriers pregnant women and people on low incomes experience when accessing maternity care.
Her research includes a systematic review on the WWiS - What Works in SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) Units project, commissioned by the Department for Education, examining the experiences of children and young people (CYP), their families, and professionals.
Dr Bakare coordinated and contributed to research within the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Public Health Interventions Responsive Studies Teams (PHIRST PHRESH) a Public Health RESearcH consortium of the University of Birmingham, Warwick, and Keele, evaluating local authority-led public health interventions across the UK, including the introduction of zero emission buses in Oxford (ZEBRA), support for prison leavers in North East Lincolnshire, and peer-led gambling recovery services in Nottingham.
Across her work, she is interested in research focused on improving population health and healthcare delivery for diverse populations.