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Staff Profile

Dr Jayne Jeffries

Research Assistant/Associate

  • Address: Population Health Sciences Institute
    Room 5.21 | 5thFloor | Ridley 1 | Newcastle University | Newcastle-upon-Tyne | NE1 4LP.
Background

Jayne’s career mission is to promote opportunities for meaningful community engagement using the principles of co-creation, and to ensure people from underserved Deep End communities are valued, respected and given a voice in the research journey in order to promote better health and prevent poor health outcomes.


Jayne is establishing herself as an applied mental health and prevention researcher with over 20 years expertise as a qualitative methodologist. She is a feminist geographer working in the Population Health Sciences Institute at Newcastle University. Her interdisciplinary portfolio of work is wide ranging, exploring the context of health and health care across allied settings from general practice and community pharmacy to voluntary organisations and participants homes. Using conceptual and methodological expertise in Participatory Action Research and inclusive approaches, she has gained a rich understanding of practitioner, patient, peer, volunteer and stakeholder roles in north east and south west England.


Tailoring longitudinal, ethnographic and creative methodologies to suit the needs of research participants, carers and service users is an important aspect of her work. Jayne’s contributions in this area include: i) shadowing social prescribing link workers in general practice; ii) health and well-being interviews with entry-level and senior NHS staff during COVID-19; iii) photovoice with a chronic pain support group; iv) mobile ethnographies of sight loss, ageing and social isolation; and v) life mapping to document acquired health conditions.


Jayne has developed a particular interest in working with underserved Deep End communities, honing specific knowledge of health services delivery research by examining patient and health care practitioner roles in primary care and public health. Jayne’s is an integral part of Deep End research, leading fieldwork to evaluate MINDED, a complex mental health intervention in to embed psychological support into DE general practice (2022-25). Her work has identified gaps in low levels of engagement in research activity, demonstrating a need to focus on community based interventions. Jayne led an NIHR Three Research Schools Prevention Fund (2025), to conduct a focused ethnography of the Community Research Link Worker (CRLW) model, established at the University of Sheffield. Jayne's expertise in co-production is focused on the EPSRC-funded Age Friendly City, ESRC IAA grant funding and peer reviewed work and co-editing role for an Area Special Section. Her current work is engaging with NENC Deep End general practices to co-develop a Community Pharmacy pathway to prevent chronic disease (2025-27).


Qualifications


2013 PhD Human Geography, Durham University. Thesis Title: Becoming Disabled.

2012 Associate Fellow, Higher Education Academy.

2008 MA (Merit) Human Geography, Manchester University.

2007 BA (Hons) 1st Class. Geography, University of Northumbria.


Research

Research History


2022 - 23 The MINDED: Mental Health IN the Deep EnD pilot evaluation: embedding a clinical psychologist in primary care to improve mental health care for patients living in the most socioeconomically disadvantaged communities within the North East and North Cumbria. NIHR Three Schools Mental Health Practice Evaluation Scheme. 

2021 -22 The Thousand Workers Study: The social and economic value of the NHS: A mixed methods evaluation of health, well-being and economic impacts of the Integrated COVID Hub North East (ICHNE) Employment Outreach Programme. 

2018 - 21 The impact of social prescribing on wellbeing, health, healthcare utilisation and costs for people with type 2 diabetes: multimethod SPRING_NE study. NIHR funded.

2018 - 19 Negotiating everyday spaces of inaccessibility: Collective action with disabled people to make changes happen. ESRC Impact Accelerator Account Follow on Funds. 

2018 Recipe for Success. ESRC Impact Accelerator Account, Co-production Fund, Newcastle University. 

2017 - 18 Reinvigorating the policy and practice arena by facilitating workshops between disabled users with mobility needs and city place makers. ESRC Impact Accelerator Account, Co-production Fund, Newcastle University. 

2017 Hidden Histories: Disabled children's hospital lives in north east England 1920s - 1970s. HASS Faculty Research Fund (FRF), Newcastle University. A pilot project exploring archival material relating to the WJ Sanderson Home for Crippled Children, Gosforth (1888 - 1974) at the Tyne and Wear Archives and Museum Service (TWAM).

2014 - 17 MyPlace: Mobility and Place for the Age Friendly City Environment. EPSRC-funded, School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University. 

2014 Inter-agency Approaches to Health and Social Care. ERC-funded, Geography at University of Exeter in Cornwall. 

2009 - 13 Becoming Disabled. ESRC-funded PhD research, Department of Geography, Durham University. 

 

Teaching




Publications