Dr Tracey Chantler
RGN MSc PhD
Research Fellow
Public Health Evaluation & Medical Anthropology
I am a medical anthropologist with a professional background in nursing and community health development. I have been involved in research relating to vaccines and immunisation for 17 years and have experience of coordinating community health and immunisation programmes in Haiti. My research in this field spans paediatric clinical vaccine trials, organisational, qualitative and mixed methods research in the UK related to the delivery of vaccine programmes, vaccine trial participation, public engagement, acceptance of new vaccines, as well as longer term ethnographic fieldwork related to community engagement, vaccine trials and ethics in western Kenya.
In post-doctoral work I have studied the role and value of recicprocal monitoring in clinical trials, and have been part of a multi-disciplinary research team are developing a mobile health self-monitoring system for patients with heart failure. As part of this research I conducted home visits, to observe how patients were integrating use of this system into their daily lives, and do talk to them about their experiences of adopting technology for self-monitoring.
Centres
Teaching
I teach on the Principles of Social Research (PSR) and the Medical Anthropology for Public Health modules, and co-edited the 2nd edition of the PSR text book. I supervise Masters and PhD students.
I am also co-author of the following open access training rescource:
Global Health Research in an Unequal World: Ethics case studies from Africa: A workbook focusing on relational rather than regulatory ethics. The messy everyday ethical issues that researchers face when working in situations of inequality and poverty.
Open access resource: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK458764/
Research
I am a member of the NIHR funded Immunisation Health Protection Research Unit (HPRU) which is collaborative research group involving Public Health England and LSHTM. The HPRU theme I contriibute to is ‘Vaccine Delivery & Confidence’. From 2014-16 I led a study which evaluated how the national immunisation programme in England adapted to changes in the health care environment, and supported an analysis of why some parents did not consent to their child being vaccinated as part of primary and secondary school-based influenza immunisation programme pilots conducted in England. Currently I am co-leading a service evaluation of the adolescent girsl HPV vaccination programmes.
I am also an investigator in collaborative immunisation related research programmes in Ethiopia, Uganda and China. The programmes in Uganda and Ethiopia are evaluations (funded by 3ie Internatioanal Initative for Impact Evaluation) of interventions with integral theories of change that seek to increase the uptake of infant vaccination and promote shared responsibility for immunisation within beneficiary communities. The research programme in China is a NIHR funded research collaboration between LSHTM, Fudan University, China CDC which aims to coduct applied vaccine research that will help decision-makers in China build a responsive, reliable and euitable national immunisation programme.
Selected Publications
