Clinical Research Network: North West Coast Appoints Deputy Clinical Director

16^th December, 2020

Today the Clinical Research Network: North West Coast is delighted to announce the appointment of Dr Jennifer Logue to the position of Deputy Clinical Director with a commencement date of 1^st March 2021.

Dr Logue is a Clinical Reader and Honorary Consultant in Metabolic Medicine, focusing both her research and clinical practice on the treatment of obesity and related metabolic disease. Her work focuses on interventions at the level of the individual with the aim of treating or preventing the complications of obesity. This includes interdisciplinary, mixed methods research to develop complex interventions, and pragmatic, efficient clinical trials utilising health record data. Her clinical work includes diabetes, cardiovascular risk factor and obesity clinics alongside clinical biochemistry.

Professor Enitan Carrol the Network’s Clinical Director commented on the appointment: “I am delighted that Jen has agreed to join the team, she brings with her a clear strength in health services research for patient benefit and an ability to engage  with stakeholders in both NHS and non-NHS settings. The region’s local communities will now benefit from her strong ambition for research access equality.”

Dr Chris Smith, Chief Operating Officer for the Network also commented: “The appointment of Dr Jennifer Logue means the full leadership team is now in place and we are in a position to build on the significant progress made in 2020 and turn our attention to the research restart process. I have no doubt that Jen will help us bring research to the wider social care settings and make research more accessible to more people.” 

We took the opportunity to ask Dr Logue a few questions about her background and early thoughts on the new role:

Tell us a little about yourself and how you came to be involved in metabolic medicine? 

I have always had a wide range of interests in medicine. Training in chemical pathology and metabolic medicine allowed me to combine laboratory medicine, research and working with all the different specialities, whilst also developing highly specialised services as a physician. During my registrar training I got my first exposure to specialist obesity treatment and knew straight away that it was what I wanted to build my research career round. Obesity is a disease that affects every system of the body, has complex causal factors that we do not understand and unfortunately affects people in so many different ways. It has led me to widen my research to work with psychologists, social scientists, public health, data science, basic science and everything in between, as we need to understand obesity from every perspective in order to find effective treatments.

How has the clinical research that you have been involved with brought about change that has benefited patients?

I conduct research into interventions for obesity, mainly weight management services. I run clinical trials, cohort studies and the work required to develop new complex interventions. Patients are at the heart of everything that we do and we ensure that patients are a meaningful part of our research team for every project. I also work closely with clinical practitioners and policy makers to ensure our research is answering the questions that are important to directly influence practice. Our work has helped highlight the poor provision of effective obesity treatment services, the benefits that good quality services can have on patient outcomes, ways to improve communication skills for health care practitioner around obesity, and how we can evaluate weight management services in real world settings.

What is the ambition for your new role and for research delivery across the North West Coast? 

There is such a huge potential for us to conduct research in the North West Coast region which will make health and care services better for the people that live here, whilst also being relevant to the rest of the UK and internationally. Unfortunately we have some of the highest disease burden and levels of health inequalities in the country and I want us to embrace research to tackle this. My ambition is for every person seeking healthcare in the North West Coast to have access to high quality research studies that are relevant to the health priorities of our region. That research should not just be taking place in our hospitals but also in community settings, in social care, nursing homes, schools, local authorities and in people’s own homes. I have a particular passion for making research efficient through the use of routinely collected data, digital health records and remote monitoring and I want North West Coast to be leading the way for efficient, pragmatic research that will allow those in rural areas, or those unable to travel, to fully participate in our research studies.

We look forward to welcoming Dr Jennifer Logue to the Network in 2021 and informing you about her plans for research delivery across the North West Coast.