iHV Expert Adviser: Immunisations
Professor of Children’s Health
Population, Policy and Practice Research and Teaching Department
UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health
Following experience as a staff nurse at Westminster Hospital, Helen became a health visitor in 1982 and worked in NW London until taking up a research post at University College London in 1986. At UCL Helen joined a research team to work on a national study of the determinants of childhood vaccine uptake published as “The Peckham Report”. Vaccine acceptance has continued to be the main focus of her research and teaching. She has extensive experience conducting research into parents’, young people’s and professionals’ knowledge and attitudes to vaccines and in the determinants of vaccine uptake. This has included research with the Gypsy Traveller community. Helen contributes to immunisation training for health care professionals locally and nationally and frequently discusses vaccination issues in the media. She is a co-author of modules in the e-learning for healthcare immunisation programme https://www.e-lfh.org.uk/programmes/immunisation/.
Helen chairs the multi-disciplinary committee hosted by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health which oversees the content and development of the personal child health record (red book). In this capacity, she was a member of the group that developed the WHO growth charts included in PCHRs.
At UCL, Helen is a director of the UCL master’s programme in Paediatrics and Child Health and co-director of Education at UCL GOS ICH. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/child-health/study
