Heather Trickey

My research focuses on public health policy intervention and parenthood.

Through my working life I have hopped the fence between academic research departments and research commissioning organisations; I’ve worked for research centres, the civil service and in the third sector. I have a background in epidemiology and in social policy and I am an experienced qualitative researcher. I have a particular interest in participative approaches to evaluation. I’ve tended to explore policy questions: What sorts of policies or interventions are implemented and why? Why do some policies, in some places, appear to ‘work’ whilst others fail? Where and how could intervention be improved? I'm very interested in the human experience of policy implementation. As part of my work for NCT charity I led a participative policy-research review of infant feeding policy, leading to changes in services and messaging. My current areas of research interest are parents and public health, infant feeding policy, peer support and community-based public health interventions.