Katherine Brown

Katherine Brown is the professor of behaviour change in health in the Department of Psychology, Sports and Geography at the University of Hertfordshire.

Early life and education She was awarded her PhD in 2004 at Sheffield Hallam University.

Career She held posts as lecturer, senior lecturer and professor of health psychology applied to public health at Coventry University where she was course director of the MSc health psychology programme for a period of three years. She was acting lead of the Centre for Technology Enabled Health Research (CTEHR) sub-theme behaviour and interventions research.

She is a chartered psychologist, registered as a health psychologist with the Health and Care Professions Council, and full member of the Division of Health Psychology. Her academic and professional expertise encompasses sexual and reproductive; health education; intervention design, development and evaluation; eHealth; public health communication; and health and wellbeing outcomes. From 2020 to present day she has led the Public Health Interventions Responsive Studies Team (PHIRST) Connect commissioned by the National Institute for Health Research.

The initial focus of Brown's research was sexual health, but this has been expanded to include research in the fields of obesity, smoking cessation, low rates of breastfeeding,

Brown has contributed to national strategies including the sexual health care pathway for school nursing, the female genital mutilation care pathway for the Department of Health, and she is currently working with Public Health England on the social and behavioural sciences strategy. including the British Academy, the National Institute for Health Research, the Medical Research Council, the European Commission and commercial funders.

The Central PHIRST began working on 1 August 2020, and includes researchers with backgrounds in public health; social work and social care; criminology; psychology; sociology; nursing; biomedical and environmental sciences; health economics; pharmacology; epidemiology; and sports science. Brown and Wills also make use of their existing research connections and membership networks for further expertise. The team worked initially with Leeds City Council and partners to evaluate the implementation of remote services for drugs and alcohol delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic. In both cases the aim is to understand the adaptation to remote delivery during the pandemic impacted services, staff and service users, in order to understand how to best structures services in the future based on the evidence of this research.