Rachael is a medical doctor turned paediatric researcher, whose clinical work motivated her towards health inequalities research. Her work examines the lifelong impact early childhood (0 – 5 years) has health and wellbeing, with a particular interest in language and socioemotional development.

She is a Co-Investigator for Born in Bradford’s BiBBS ACHIEVE birth cohort. BiBBS ACHIEVE examines the impact of health inequalities on over 5000 inner-city children’s development, and whether early interventions can mitigate that impact. Rachael also conducts research within Born in Bradford for INGENIOUS and for Healthy Urban Places, projects that investigate the effect of urban environments on family physical and mental health. She is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of York. Prior to BCHDS, she conducted research in Health Sciences and in Education, was a Leverhulme Trust Doctoral Scholar (PhD) in Infant and Child Psychology, and worked as a clinical doctor in Paediatrics, Psychiatry, and Emergency Medicine. She has additional training in medical law and in developmental neuroscience and psychopathology, with a year of fMRI research at Yale University.

Rachael’s research methods include behavioural experiments, behavioural genetics, working with computational models, public health intervention evaluations, epidemiological exposome approaches, and longitudinal cohort analyses (e.g. structural equation modelling). She is a fan of R.