Methodologists

Dr Bronia Arnott

Newcastle University

Dr Bronia Arnott is a Methodologist having worked across research, policy, and practice since completing a PhD focussed on the critical first 1001 days of life. 

Dr Laura Basterfield

Newcastle University

Laura is a Senior Research Associate at Newcastle University, whose research focuses on physical fitness and mental wellbeing in children and young people. She provides methodology support to the SCPH in quantitative methods. 

Dr Erica Cook

University of Bedfordshire

Dr Erica Cook is a Registered Health Psychologist and Associate Professor at the University of Bedfordshire, with expertise in behaviour change, evaluating public health interventions to address health inequalities, and research inclusion.  She has conducted research in areas including green spaces, vaccination uptake and end-of-life care.

Erica has been a research advisor for over 10 years, delivered by Newcastle and Partners and the former NIHR East of England Research Design Service.

Erica has expertise in mixed-methods research, including outcome and process evaluations, and qualitative research.

Dr Erica Cook is a Registered Health Psychologist and Associate Professor at the University of Bedfordshire, with expertise in behaviour change, evaluating public health interventions to address health inequalities, and research inclusion.  She has conducted research in areas including green spaces, vaccination uptake and end-of-life care.

Erica has been a research advisor for over 10 years, delivered by Newcastle and Partners and the former NIHR East of England Research Design Service.

Erica has expertise in mixed-methods research, including outcome and process evaluations, and qualitative research.

Dr Dorcas Karethi

Newcastle University

Dorcas Kareithi is statistician with the Biostatistics Research Group at Newcastle University, UK and holds a MSc. in Biometry/Biostatistics from the University of Nairobi and a BSc. in Economics and Mathematics, Kabarak University. Dorcas has over a decade of experience in the health industry as an analyst, researcher and epidemiological consultant, working with several organizations in Africa and abroad to develop, implement and evaluate health products and services. 

Dorcas provides methodology support to the SCPH in public health, quantitative methods, study design and statistics. Read about her profile at Newcastle University here: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/medical-sciences/people/profile/dorcaskareithi.html 

Dr Nan Lin

Newcastle University

Nan Lin is a Senior Lecturer in Biostatistics within the Biostatistics Research Group at the Population Health Sciences Institute, Newcastle University. His research interests focus on statistical methodology and medical applications, including:

• Time-to-event data, survival analysis, Cox models, recurrent events, and multivariate failure-time data

• Cross-over, before-and-after, and difference-in-differences designs, with sample size and power calculations

• Electronic medical record (EMR) data

• Sensitivity analysis and statistical testing

• Uncertainty quantification

• Confounding and causal inference

• Quasi-likelihood methods

• Model misspecification

Dr Charlotte Rothwell

Newcastle University

Charlotte is a Senior Research Associate at Newcastle University, her research areas of interest are  related to obesity and weight management  and health and workplace health and wellbeing interventions. She also has expertise in healthcare education in the workplace. Charlotte provides methodological support in qualitative, realsit and mixed methods research.  

Dr Rohini Terry

University of Exeter

Rohini is a Research Fellow at the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration South West Peninsula (PenARC) based at the University of Exeter and joined the Specialist Centre for Public Health as a Methodologist in September 2025. 

Rohini has first degree in psychology and completed her PhD in 2006.  She has since gained extensive experience in designing, supporting and conducting research related to health and social care and has previously worked as a research advisor with the former NIHR Research Design Service.   She has a particular interest and expertise in complex interventions and qualitative research, research inclusion and supporting research capacity building outside of NHS settings. 

Dr Helen Munro Wilde

University of Hertfordshire

Helen works is a mixed-methods researcher based at the University of Hertfordshire. Besides her PhD, she has an MSc in Epidemiology and public health experience at the national, regional and local authority level. She works within a team who specialise in scale development - both PREMs and PROMs, as well as leading study recruitment in UK schools as part of the European BootStRaP study (https://www.internetandme.eu/).  Her focus is in psychosocial health and self-management, specifically in relation to long-term conditions (e.g. kidney disease) and mobile phone use and mental health in teenagers. 

Dr Megan Wood

Bradford Centre for Health Data Science

Megan is a Senior Research Fellow at the Bradford Centre for Health Data Science where her research focuses on social media use in adolescents and how this may influence mental health outcomes. She is a quantitative methodologist within the NIHR RSS Specialist Centre for Public Health with a background in Psychology. Her expertise lies within the analysis of administrative and cohort data to better understand children’s health and education outcomes.