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Professor Jennie Popay

Jennie Popay is Professor of Sociology and Public Health, Institute for Health Research, University of Lancaster, United Kingdom. She spent five years teaching in East Africa then studied in New Zealand before beginning her research career at the Unit for the Study of Health Policy with Peter Draper at Guy's Hospital in London at the end of the 1970s. Since then she has worked as a sociologist in social policy and public health in academia, the voluntary sector and the NHS.

Her research interests include social and gender inequalities in health, the sociology of knowledge (with particular emphasis on the relationship between professional and lay knowledge about health and illness) and the evaluation of complex social interventions. She has published widely on these subjects in academic, policy and popular media. She was one of the earliest activists for systematic reviews to be extended to include evidence on implementation and on the experience of the people at whom interventions are aimed - studies which use a diverse range of designs and for which methods for synthesis need to be developed. To this end she was a founding convenor of the Qualitative Research Methods Group within the Cochrane Collaboration and the Implementation Process Methods Group in the Campbell Collaboration. She has used a range of methods in her research, but has a particular interest in developing the role of qualitative research in public health.

In the past she has held public appointments as a non-executive director of a community healthcare trust, as chair of a local Child Development and Early Years Partnership Board, a commissioner with the Commission for Health Improvement and a commissioner and vice chair of Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health. She currently receives research funding from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence to support a Public Health Collaborating Centre.