Researcher Showcase: Heather Rostron

Heather is a Clinical Academic Senior Research Nurse. She is currently completing her NIHR Doctoral Fellowship ‘PaEdiatric Rheumatology FramEworK for Technology enabled care (The Perfekt study). For a small proportion of her time, Heather leads the ‘Leeds Young Research Owls’ – a Young Person’s Advisory Group, which she set up in 2019. ‘The Owls’ as they are affectionately known, advise researchers on their projects, and in return, members of the group learn about research and its importance.

Heather is based clinically at Leeds Children’s Hospital as part of the Children’s Clinical Research Team. She has an academic base alongside her primary supervisor, Professor Anthony Redmond, at Chapel Allerton Hospital at Leeds Institute of Rheumatic and Musculoskeletal Medicine, University of Leeds. Heather began her PhD studies in April 2023 and has undertaken a mixed methods systematic review, to identify whether healthcare technologies are being used to support the management of children and young people in rheumatology services and if so, how. Heather has attended several conferences to date during her PhD, the most notable of which have been the ‘Paediatric Rheumatology European Society’ (PReS) conference in Amsterdam, and the ‘Successes and Failures in Telehealth’ conference in Adelaide. Heather was pleased that her first PhD-related paper has been published in the BMJ Open and has enjoyed supervising NIHR Internship students recently. Heather is also part of the team that helps to organise events through the Leeds Children’s Research Forum.

You can find out more about ‘The Owls’ here (https://generationr.org.uk/leeds-young-research-owls/) and Heather’s Perfekt study here (https://www.perfektstudy.co.uk/).