Dr Jo Parsons PhD

PhD in Health and Nursing Studies, Coventry University, 2019
MSc in Health Psychology, Coventry University, 2014
MSc in Psychology, Open University, 2010
BSc (hons) in Psychology, Staffordshire University, 2004

Jo is primarily a qualitative health researcher, with a track record of designing and planning high quality qualitative research.  She has experience in securing funding for qualitative research, and leading qualitative projects. She has experience in all stages of planning and conducting studies. She also has experience in designing and evaluating health interventions and completing process evaluations alongside trials. She is skilled in evidence synthesis techniques, with significant expertise in systematic reviewing.

Her academic background is in Health Psychology and her primary research interest is around understanding and increasing vaccination uptake in pregnancy, and the development and testing of an intervention for this population.

Her current research portfolio consists of a wide variety of topics. She is currently working on conducting appraisal of new technology for NICE, working as part of large research teams evaluating a stroke intervention, early health checks for young people with intellectual disabilities, and an educational intervention for suturing skills for midwives.

She is currently supervising two PhD students, one conducting a feasibility RCT study examining ankle fixation surgery, and the other examining patient facing triage tools in primary care.

Jo would be interested in supervising doctoral students in broad health science subjects, including maternal health, health interventions, behaviour change.

Maternal health research

One of her primary research areas is maternal health. Much of the research within this area focuses on the exploration of vaccination behaviour amongst pregnant women, and how to increase vaccination rates amongst this population.

She is currently leading a project developing an intervention to increase vaccination amongst pregnant women, based on previous qualitative research that explored the beliefs and perceptions pregnant women hold about vaccination post covid-19.

She is also working as a qualitative lead on FutureSuture, a project developing and testing an educational intervention for suturing for midwives.

Evidence synthesis

She is currently working on a number of systematic reviews. One examining the clinical effectiveness and safety of disease-modifying treatments for spinal muscular atrophy, and one exploring how the Illness Risk Representation framework (a theoretical framework health behaviour change theory) has been used to explain vaccination behaviour (to compliment the vaccination in pregnancy intervention development work)

Qualitative expertise

She is currently involved in a number of additional studies as qualitative lead on studies developing and/or testing health interventions. RESTORE is a large clinical trial examining the effectiveness of an intervention for stroke patients. She is a qualitative lead and is conducting process evaluation as part of the trial. She is also qualitative lead on a study developing and testing an intervention for increasing annual health checks in young people with intellectual disabilities.