Our Team

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Jo Trask, Head of Health Inequalities and patient engagement at Cheshire and Merseyside Cancer Alliance has over 30 years of experience in inequity.

Jo specialises in development of staff to tackle health inequalities, cancer pathways and inequity, and involving diverse patient representation in all work. With a background in the third sector and NHS, supporting people we hear from least, Jo has helped a wide range of organisations to embrace the challenge of tackling health inequality, encouraging active approaches across systems.

Jo works widely across the UK to support cancer services working towards equity

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Laura-Jayne's doctoral thesis aims to better understand what care people with a laryngectomy and their families need at home.

Research Question:

What are the healthcare needs of laryngectomy patients and their families following discharge after surgery and how can these be incorporated into a prototype education and training package for use by community healthcare professionals?

Research Objectives:

1. To identify and critically review available laryngectomy education and training packages (ETP)

2. To explore patient and family members experiences and needs from community healthcare services following laryngectomy

3. To co-design a prototype laryngectomy ETP for community healthcare professionals

Methods:

There will be three work-streams in this research:

· Work-stream 1: Environmental scan of available laryngectomy ETP’s

· Work-stream 2: Semi-structured qualitative interviews with laryngectomy patients and family members

· Work-stream 3: Co-design workshops with patients, families and healthcare professionals to design a prototype ETP

Two simultaneous groups will run alongside the research: patient-advisory group and healthcare professional stakeholder advisory group. Both groups will review findings from the environmental scan and semi-structured interviews to shape the co-design phase and ensure the research stays grounded in patient experience and service needs.

Supervisors: Professor Jo Patterson,

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Linda is an advanced practitioner dietitian with over 12 years clinical experience, specialising in home enteral feed and head and neck cancer. She has developed a research interest in prehabilitation in head and neck cancer. In 2020 she secured an NIHR pre-clinical academic fellowship and completed a systematic review to investigate the current landscape of nutritional prehabilitation in head and neck cancer.

In January 2025 she will commence an NIHR Doctoral Clinical Academic Fellowship in collaboration with the University of Liverpool and the Liverpool Head and Neck Centre. The aim of her research is to develop, implement and investigate the feasibility of a Co-produced nutritional prEhabilitation iN Head And Neck CancEr intervention for patients treated with radical radiotherapy (+/- chemotherapy) (Co- ENHANCE).

She is also chair of the British Dietitian Association (BDA) specialist group Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition Group (PENG) and represent PENG on the British Association of Parenteral and Enteral (BAPEN) council.

Supervisors: Jo Patterson