Professor Cicely Marston
BA (Hons) MSc PhD
Professor
of Public Health
LSHTM
15-17 Tavistock Place
London
WC1H 9SH
United Kingdom
I lead the DEPTH research group which brings together scholarship centred on community participation in health. We are currently examining ways to ensure communities are included in pandemic response, and in improving co-production of good sexual and reproductive health promotion and services in complex and challenging environments, including in crisis settings.
My research focuses on sexual practice, contraception and abortion, and access to and experiences within healthcare services more generally, attending to the ways context (including marginalisation) influences health, health promotion and healthcare services.
I have an overarching interest in interdisciplinarity and methodology, particularly in developing methods to investigate complex social interventions.
I hold an undergraduate degree in Human Sciences from Oxford University, and from LSHTM a Medical Demography MSc, and an interdisciplinary PhD and postdoc in young people's sexual practice, participatory health promotion, and sexuality education, with fieldwork in Mexico City. I spent some time at Imperial College London conducting research and running a Public Health MSc, returning to LSHTM in 2005.
Affiliations
Centres
Teaching
I teach on the following modules: Sociological Approaches to Health, Family Planning, Sexual Health, and Qualitative Methodologies. I supervise PhD and DrPH students.
Research
My research focuses on interdisciplinary work on sexual and reproductive health and community participation, sexual behaviour (including coercion), particularly of young people, transitions to adulthood, contraception and abortion, healthcare improvement for marginalised populations, complex public health interventions, and community participation in health. I also work with various external organisations, including the World Health Organization in these areas.
I'm currently leading the research for the ACCESS consortium (Approaches to Complex and Challenging Environments for Sustainable Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights), which focuses on improving sexual and reproductive health and rights for marginalised populations in complex and challenging environments, including humanitarian settings.
This sickle cell life: voices and experiences of young people with sickle cell was a co-produced project with young people, carers and clinicians that explored life and care transitions to adulthood for young people with sickle cell.
The sixteen 18 project examined young people's sexual practices and meanings attached to those practices.
I led the longstanding LSHTM partnership with CLAHRC for Northwest London, researching participation and engagement of patients and members of the the public in healthcare quality improvement and was technical lead on WHO recommendations on community participation in maternal and newborn health promotion. This combination of our empirical data collection and evidence synthesis work has helped inform the Global Strategy for Women's, Children's and Adolescents' Health.
Most of my papers are available open access, many via LSHTM research online. If you can't find the paper you need, please email me.