Dr Stephanie Chambers
- Senior Lecturer (Urban Studies & Social Policy)
- Associate (School of Health & Wellbeing)
email:
Stephanie.Chambers@glasgow.ac.uk
pronouns:
She/her/hers
School of Social and Political Sciences, Adam Smith Building, 28 Bute Gardens, Glasgow, G12 8RS
Biography
Dr Stephanie Chambers is a senior lecturer in Sociology of Health and Wellbeing in the School of Social and Political Sciences. She is also a member of the School of Health and Wellbeing’s Social Scientists in Health group and the Complexity in Health Programme at the MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit. She joined Sociology at Glasgow in 2020 after holding an MRC/University of Glasgow Research Fellowship at the MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit. Her research is focused on improving children’s health. Her areas of interest include:
- the determinants of dietary intake and other health behaviours, including the influence of the family, schools, advertising and marketing, and public policy;
- children’s health outcomes;
- design and evaluation of interventions and policies to improve children’s health and wellbeing
- commercial determinants of health
Stephanie worked previously at the University of Dundee where she held a Chief Scientist Office Postdoctoral Fellowship on school food education. She also carried out an evaluation of the Childsmile oral health programme. At the University of Reading, Stephanie worked as a researcher investigating sustainable and healthy food chains. During this time she also completed her PhD examining public opinions on the causes of obesity and support for policies to address it. She has a BA in English and Politics and an MSc in Public Policy.
Research interests
Research Interests: Evaluation of policy and interventions to improve health outcomes, children's health and wellbeing, school based interventions, influences on diets, health inequalities, commercial determinants of health, childhood obesity, children's diet and nutrition.
Expertise: mixed methods, qualitative methods, process evaluation, evaluation of policy and interventions to improve diets, influences on diets, dietary inequalities, food marketing and regulation, childhood obesity, children’s diet and nutrition, research with children, policy analysis, intervention design, reviews, survey design and analysis.
Grants
Current grants:
Chief Scientist Office - Improving Young People’s Health Outcomes Through Addressing Emotionally-Based School Non-Attendance Within The Scottish Context (Co-investigator) 2024-2026
National Insitutue of Health Research - Public Health Research Programme - Healthy Dads, Healthy Kids in Prisons: a feasibility study and pilot for an intervention to improve father child relationships (Co-investigator) 2022 - 2024
National Insitutue of Health Research - Public Health Research Programme - Free School Meals, Diet Quality and Food Insecurity in Secondary School Pupils - the CANTEEN Study (Co-investigator) 2023 - 2025
Chief Scientist Office - Feasibility of interventions supportin fathers and children in health behaviour change and of public health programme delivery in professional football clubs in Scotland (Co-investigator) 2018 - 2024
Previous grants:
Public Health Wales - Evaluation of the Whole Systems Approach to Obesity (Co-investigator) 2024
Public Health Wales - Collaboration network analysis for Child and Family Healthy Weight system interventions (Co-investigator) 2023
ESRC Impact Acceleration Award - Empowering stakeholders in early learning in childcare to evalaute and implement outdoor childcare (Co-investigator) 2020-21
UKRI - Generating Excellent Nutrition in UK Schools (GENIUS) network (Co-investigator) 2019 - 2022
Scottish Funding Council - Developing a valid and feasible assessment tool for use in an adaptive intervention for moderate acute malnutrition (Co-investigator) 2018 - 2019
NHS Lanarkshire - Healthy Schools Parent Engagement Research Project (Co-Investigator) 2017 - 2020
NHS Health Scotland - Process evaluation of the implementation of Universal Free School Meals (FSM) for Primary 1 to Primary 3 (Co-Investigator) 2015-2016
Cancer Research UK - Growing Grandchildren, CRUK-BUPA Innovation Grant (Principal Investigator) 2014-2015
NHS Health Scotland - Diet and excess mortality in Glasgow and Scotland: Exploring differences in diet and nutrition (Co-Investigator) 2014 - 2015
MRC/University of Glasgow - Research Fellowship (Fellowship holder), 2014 - 2020
Chief Scientist Office - Developing an intervention to evaluate a context-based, teacher-led dietary programme to promote healthier eating behaviour in school children (Fellowship holder), 2011 - 2014
Action for Sick Children (Scotland) - Special Smiles Dental Project Evaluation, (Co-investigator) 2009
Supervision
I welcome enquiries for PhD student supervision related to:
- Children’s health and wellbeing
- Health inequalities
- Commercial determinants of health
- Public health nutrition, including developing and evaluating interventions and policies
- Li, Hao
Evaluating the gender-based health inequalities in the post-industrial French department: Pas-de-Calais - Malallah, Haya S M A
Childhood Obesity in the Digital Era - Smillie, Susie
Using the capabilities approach to explore young people’s wellbeing during school holidays and the role of creative arts during this time
Completed
- Kathryn Machray – Food insecurity among single men in Scotland: A qualitative investigation (2017-2022), MRC-funded studentship
- Robin Ireland - Commercial determinants of health in the English Premier League (2017-2020), University of Glasgow, College of Social Sciences studentship
- Lauren Carters-White - Understanding the policy and public debate surrounding the regulation of unhealthy online advertising to children (2015-2019), MRC-funded studentship
- Sheela Tripathee - Together through thick and thin: Cohabiting partners’ reciprocal influence during men’s attempts to change their dietary practices and physical activity to lose weight and maintain weight loss (2014-2018), MRC-funded studentship
Teaching
Stephanie is Programme and Dissertation Convenor for the MRes/MSc Global Health. Please feel free to get in touch if you want to know more about the programme: stephanie.chambers@glasgow.ac.uk.
For the 2023/24 academic year, Stephanie is course convenor for Improving Health and Society: Programme Development and Evaluation.
Stephanie also supervises undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations in health and wellbeing.
Previous teaching includes qualitative methods, including interview and observational methods, health inequalities and carrying out research with children and young people.
Professional activities & recognition
Prizes, awards & distinctions
- 2022: Research Culture Celebration (University of Glasgow)
- 2015: Erasmus Mundus Nova Domus Visiting Scholar University of Ottawa (European Commission)
Research fellowships
- 2014 - 2020: Medical Research Council/University of Glasgow
- 2011 - 2014: Chief Scientist Office
Grant committees & research advisory boards
- 2021 - 2023: Scottish Graduate School of Social Sciences, Invited interdisciplinary steer expert
- 2023 - 2025: Institute of Education, UCL, ESRC-funded School Meals Service Study Steering Committee
- 2022 - 2024: University of Cambridge, NIHR-funded Evaluation of planning policy to regulate takeaway food outlets for improved health in England Study Steering Group
- 2018 - 2019: Scottish Government, Using the planning system to improve the food environments around schools Steering Group
Professional & learned societies
- 2023 - 2024: Chair Scientific Programme Committee, Glasgow 2024, UK Society for Behavioural Medicine
- 2023 - 2024: Local Organising Committee Member, UK Society for Behavioural Medicine
- 2020 - 2022: Deputy chair of the Children’s Lifestyle Behaviours, Wellbeing and Health Special Interest Group, UK Society for Behavioural Medicine
Selected international presentations
- 2015: Laboratory for the Interdisciplinary Study of Food Seminar Series (University of Ottawa)
- 2015: Webinar - Effectiveness of regulations to reduce the impact of advertising of Food High in Fat, Sugar and Salt (Heart and Stroke Foundation Canada)
Supplementary
- Selected for the Aurora Leadership training course to promote women in Higher Education November 2016