The OBS Team — OBSUK Study

The OBS UK team are made up of experienced researchers from several different universities. If you’d like to contact the study team please use the details below.

Sarah Bell

Dr. Bell has been a Consultant Anaesthetist with an interest in obstetric anaesthesia in Cardiff since 2015. Her research interests include postpartum haemorrhage, maternal sepsis and process evaluations of complex interventions. She was one of the lead clinicians for the OBS Cymru quality improvement project, a Welsh Government funded initiative to improve and standardise post-partum haemorrhage care across Wale. She received a Clinical Research Time Award from Health and Care Research Wales in 2022 and is co-Chief Investigator for the NIHR-funded OBS UK study.

Peter Collins

Peter Collins is professor of haematology at Cardiff University. He specialises in the management of bleeding disorders and works in the Cardiff Haemophilia Centre at the University Hospital of Wales. He has been involved in research into bleeding after child birth for the last 15 years focusing on how abnormalities of blood clotting can be rapidly diagnosed and treated.

Philip Pallmann

Philip Pallmann is the senior trial statistician for OBS UK. He is a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Trials Research at Cardiff University where he works as a medical statistician on the design, conduct, analysis, and reporting of randomised controlled trials and other well-designed studies. His background is in applied statistics, but he works across a wide range of clinical areas including infections, neurodegenerative diseases, and population health, as well as on the advancement of clinical trials methodology, in particular efficient design methods such as adaptive designs. He co-leads the Adaptive Designs Working Group of the MRC-NIHR Trials Methodology Research Partnership, is a member of the MRC-NIHR Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (EME) funding committee, and an Associate Editor for the peer-reviewed journal Trials.

Lisa Hinton

Lisa is a senior social scientist in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences. She leads applied qualitative and mixed methods research aimed at improving healthcare, with a focus on women’s health, global health, patient and staff experiences, inclusion, and diversity.

Lisa was a journalist and TV producer at the BBC and Channel 4 before joining the NDPCHS to complete her MRC-funded DPhil in medical sociology on experiences of infertility. After completing her DPhil in 2010, Lisa worked with the Health Experiences Research Group (HERG) and took on the role of Director for Applied Research for HERG in 2017.

From 2019-2023 Lisa worked at the Healthcare Improvement Studies (THIS) Institute, at the University of Cambridge where she was co-chief investigator for major research programmes on avoiding brain injury in childbirth (ABC) and co-producing good practice for remote antenatal care (CORONET).

She was a co-principle investigator, with Dorothy Oluoch, for the RESPECT study, Kenyan-based research exploring the potential for using mothers’ experiences of pre-term birth to improve care in LMICs. She is currently co-investigator for the SNAP2 trial which seeks to optimize care for people after a hypertensive pregnancy, leading on evaluation and health equity, and co-investigator for the Children’s Surgery Outcome Reporting programme using routinely available data to reduce unwarranted variation in the health and wellbeing of children undergoing early surgery.

Lisa is an expert in qualitative and mixed methods for applied health research. She has published 87 peer-reviewed journal articles for clinical, sociological, policy and practitioner audiences. She regularly supervises masters and doctoral students and is Director of Oxford Qualitative Courses, the University of Oxford's expert-led programme of short courses in qualitative research.

Pauline Slade

Pauline is Professor in Clinical Psychology at University of Liverpool and Consultant Clinical Psychologist. She pioneered the Birth Trauma Clinic at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals which is a forerunner of the new maternal mental health services which are now being rolled out across the country by National Health Service England(NHSE) . She led the team who developed the Good Practice Guidance for Mental Health in Maternity and Neonatal settings published by NHSE in 2021.

She specialises in developing and evaluating psychological prevention and intervention strategies to improve perinatal mental health. She has a specific interest and an international reputation in understanding the causes of and improving care for post traumatic stress after childbirth.

Pauline is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society (BPS), has been a past chair for the Faculty of Perinatal Psychology and was recently awarded the prestigious MB Shapiro Award 2021 for eminence in clinical psychology.

Mairead Black

Mairead Black is an academic obstetrician in Aberdeen. She has research interests in supporting informed birth planning and improving intrapartum care. She uses a wide range of methodologies within health services research. Mairead also works as an honorary consultant obstetrician in NHS Grampian, with lead roles in labour ward and obstetric risk management.

Haddy Fye

Dr. Fye is a Researcher with expertise in academic-industry partnerships for the delivery of translational science. She has worked in the UK and internationally on communicable and non-communicable diseases including Sickle Cell Anaemia. Dr Haddy Fye is a Co-Investigator (PPIE) on the OBSUK study.

William Parry-Smith

BSc MBBS Imp Lond, MD Bham, PGCert Kel, AICSM, MRCOG, FHEA

Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Keele University

Honorary Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist

Clinical lead for Research and Innovation

Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust

Prof. Parry-Smith has an interest in global health having worked on research projects in Nepal and Malawi, focusing on cervical screening and maternal sepsis. He has previously worked as a research fellow at the Birmingham University WHO collaborating centre for global women’s health. He continues to collaborate with colleagues on post-partum haemorrhage, maternal sepsis and maternity digital health solutions research in the UK and internationally.

Tanvi Rai

Tanvi is a senior researcher at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford. She is a mixed methods researcher with a PhD in public health. Tanvi has an interdisciplinary and international background that spans across public health and applied social sciences. She has a strong interest in health inequalities and the need to embed social justice principles across all health research. Her research so far has been about social and structural determinants of health, inclusive research methods and practices, maternal and sexual health, public health communication, as well as studies involving socially-sensitive health topics and working with socially marginalised populations. Tanvi is leading the process evaluation of the OBS UK study.

Simon Stanworth

Prof Simon J Stanworth is Consultant Haematologist at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford (NHSBT and Oxford University Hospitals Foundation Trust), and Professor of Hematology and Transfusion Medicine, University of Oxford. He has over 25 years of clinical research experience since being awarded his DPhil in 1995 from the University of Oxford. His research addresses when to use blood components or alternatives to blood. He is leading areas of research in acquired bleeding and in anaemia management in pregnancy.

Rachel Collis

Rachel Collis is qualified from St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London University in 1986. After training in anaesthesia in the major teaching hospitals around London, she developed a passion for obstetric anaesthesia whilst working as a specialist registrar at Queen Charlottes Hospital. She moved to Cardiff in 1997 to take up a consultant post with a special interest in high-risk obstetric anaesthesia at The University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff.

She has a long-standing interest in obstetric anaesthetic research and has published regularly in this area since 1993. Over the past 15-years she has published on the management of PPH, focusing on replacement of coagulation products, the use of point of care coagulation monitoring and improving PPH outcomes through multidisciplinary team behaviour. She completed a master’s with distinction in Healthcare Risk Management in 2012 and has been the lead for obstetric anaesthesia risk management in her Health Board for more than 20-years.

Her interests outside medicine are walking and painting.

Ayse Gur-Geden

Ayse is a mother of two, and an education professional with a background in sociology and applied linguistics. Among her research interests is justice and equity for underrepresented and disadvantaged women from a diverse range of backgrounds. She takes part in the OBS study as a Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) team member.

Stavros Petrou

Stavros Petrou is Professor of Health Economics in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences. Having previously held posts as Health Economist at the University Oxford (1997-2010) and Professor of Health Economics at the University of Warwick (2010-2019), he returned to Oxford in July 2019.

A highly regarded academic, he is one of only two health economists to have held an MRC Senior Non-Clinical Research Fellowship. He has been an NIHR Senior Investigator since 2017. He has served as a core member of the Department of Health’s Policy Research Programme Commissioning Panel, a member of NIHR Programme Grants for Applied Research funding panels, and currently serves on a number of external committees and editorial boards. He serves as a mentor to mid-career academic researchers through the NIHR mentoring programme.

Methodological development within health economic evaluation represents one of the key themes of his research. In recent years he has led several methodological studies, the primary outputs of which have been published by Health Economics, European Journal of Health Economics, PharmacoEconomics, Medical Decision Making and Quality of Life Research.

He has recently acted as member of a number of working groups developing methodological approaches and reporting standards for health economic evaluation, including the Department of Health Review of Cost-Effectiveness Methodology for Immunisation Programmes and Procurements working group, and the ISPOR Health Economic Publication Guidelines Task Force.

Stavros has overseen the design, conduct, analysis and reporting of alternative types of complex health economic research projects, including trial-based economic evaluations, economic evaluations based on decision-analytic models, systematic reviews, preference elicitation studies, and analyses of both cross-sectional data and cohort study data using econometric techniques.

Julia Sanders

Julia Sanders is Professor of Clinical Midwifery at Cardiff University. She has worked as part of the OBS research team improving care for women who bleed heavily during birth for the past 10 years. She worked as a Consultant Midwife for 12 years in the Midwifery Led Unit at the University Hospital of Wales providing care for women with uncomplicated pregnancies. In addition to the work around postpartum haemorrhage she has led many studies across maternity care including exploring the safety of waterbirth for mothers and their babies, and looking at new ways of supporting younger and breastfeeding mothers.

Julia Townson

Julia Townson is the Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) lead for OBS UK, and provides senior responsibility for the delivery of the trial within the Centre for Trials Research, Cardiff University. She is a Principal Research Fellow and as a clinical trials methodologist, works across a range of clinical areas, to improve health and well-being, and to reduce health inequalities.