Rebecca Lynch

• PhD
• Lecturer at University of Exeter

Multimorbidity has become an increasingly prominent lens through which public health focuses on the ‘burden’ of ill health in ageing populations, with the promise of a more upstream and holistic approach. We use a situational analysis (drawing on documentary analysis and interviews with service providers, policy actors and people living with multip...

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Trinidad, this paper examines how the framing of a particular apocalyptic future provided a moral commentary and model for wellbeing in contemporary everyday life. Changing social, political, and economic circumstances and relations had brought a range of new risks and anxieties into daily life. These more recen...

Background Urinary incontinence affects between 25% and 45% of women. The availability and quality of services is variable and inequitable, but our understanding of the drivers is incomplete. Objectives The objectives of the study were to model patient, specialist clinician, primary and secondary care, and geographical factors associated with refe...

BACKGROUND: Managing multimorbidity is complex for both patients and healthcare systems. Patients with multimorbidity often use a variety of primary and secondary care services. Country-specific research exploring the healthcare utilisation and cost consequences of multimorbidity may inform future interventions and payment schemes in the UK. AIM:...

Boenink et al. (Emerging technologies for diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease. Innovating with care. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) focus on innovation in early diagnostics for Alzheimer’s.

Introduction and hypothesisThis qualitative interview study explores aspects women with urinary incontinence(UI) reflect upon when considering whether or not to have surgery. Conducted prior to the recent mesh pause in the UK, the article provides insights for current and future approaches to shared decision-making.Methods Qualitative in-depth inte...

Background: Variation in access to joint replacement surgery has been widely reported but less attention has been given to the impact of comorbidities on the patient journey to joint replacement surgery. There is a lack of consensus amongst healthcare professionals and commissioners about how patients with comorbidities should be referred or selec...

Variation in access to joint replacement surgery has been widely reported but less attention has been given to the impact of comorbidities on the patient journey to joint replacement surgery. There is a lack of consensus amongst healthcare professionals and commissioners about how patients with comorbidities should be referred or selected for joint...

Reflecting on the contributions to this edited volume, this chapter draws out some of the key themes and issues raised by social science approaches to personal medical devices (PMDs). The chapters illustrate that what PMDs (and other health technologies) ‘do’ and ‘are’ may be quite different. They are variously embedded through practices, spaces, t...

Focusing on debates around the risk/benefits of e-cigarettes within the field of public health, this chapter argues that the for/against sides in these debates construct e-cigarettes as different objects, with implicit assumptions about what these objects ‘are’, how people will respond to them, and their comparability to tobacco cigarettes. Drawing...

Why should we explore personal medical devices (PMDs)? Fuelled by the growth of so-called lifestyle conditions, shifts to personalised and patient-led medicine and the increasing sophistication and miniaturisation of devices themselves, PMDs have become increasingly significant in both clinical and non-clinical arenas. This chapter presents some of...

Background Hip and knee replacement surgery is one of the most common and effective surgical procedures. The rise in multi-morbidity world-wide is leading to increasing numbers of patients with comorbid conditions undergoing joint replacement surgery. Financially stretched commissioners of health care services in the English National Health Service...

Background and objectives: The INTERVAL trial aimed to find the optimum frequency of blood donation to enhance blood supplies and maintain donor health. This not only requires biological knowledge, but also an appreciation of donor perspectives, and how their experiences and beliefs might be central if any changes are ever to be made. To address t...

This book raises questions about the changing relationships between technology, people and health. It examines the accelerating pace of technological development and a general shift to personalized, patient-led medicine. Such relationships are increasingly mediated through particular medical technologies, drawn together by the authors as ‘personal...

Focusing on debates around the risk/benefits of e-cigarettes within the field of public health, this chapter argues that the for/against sides in these debates construct e-cigarettes as different objects, with implicit assumptions about what these objects ‘are’, how people will respond to them, and their comparability to tobacco cigarettes. Drawing...

In line with the concept of ‘nudging’ people to change their behaviour, there has been increased attention on habit as a focus for psychologically-based health interventions. It is hoped that behaviours initiated by interventions not only become so regular that they are normalised into people's everyday lives, but that through repetition they may e...

In line with the concept of 'nudging' people to change their behaviour, there has been increased attention on habit as a focus for psychologically-based health interventions. It is hoped that behaviours initiated by interventions not only become so regular that they are normalised into people's everyday lives, but that through repetition they may e...

In recent years, health behaviour interventions have received a great deal of attention in both research and policy as a means of encouraging people to lead healthier lives. The emphasis of such interventions has varied over time, in terms of level of intervention (e.g. individual vs community) and drawing on different disciplinary perspectives. Re...

Many studies of blood donation have looked at the motives of donors, their relationship with the wider society and corresponding values such as gift-giving, altruism and responsibility. These underpin a rhetorical representation of person-to-person donation that neglects the many technical processes that take place between donation and eventual use...

The intellectual and moral imperatives that underscore public health have sustained the idea that its fundamental scope is the study of human health, illness and suffering, and that these are self-evidently attributable to individuals and groups of people. This edited collection explores to what extent a shift towards more posthuman perspectives –...

This work examines constructions of the body, health, illness and misfortune in a Trinidadian village to consider how anxieties about risky and changing life circumstances are dealt with through cosmological frameworks. As such these discussions hope to contribute to the study of changing frameworks (particularly in relation to the growth of Evange...

Self-monitoring, by which individuals record and appraise ongoing information about the status of their body in order to improve their health, has been a key element in the personal management of conditions such as diabetes, but it is now also increasingly used in relation to health-associated behaviours. The introduction of self-monitoring as an i...

Well London is a multicomponent community engagement and coproduction programme designed to improve the health of Londoners living in socioeconomically deprived neighbourhoods. To evaluate outcomes of the Well London interventions, a cluster randomised trial (CRT) was conducted that included a longitudinal qualitative component, which is reported h...

We report the main results, among adults, of a cluster-randomised-trial of Well London, a community-engagement programme promoting healthy eating, physical activity and mental well-being in deprived neighbourhoods. The hypothesis was that benefits would be neighbourhood-wide, and not restricted to intervention participants. The trial was part of a...

During a 'Well London' study, residents were asked about their neighbourhood and its environment. Above all other complaints, 'dog poo' was mentioned as a key concern. Despite low rates of infection and disease among the human population resulting from contact with canine faecal matter, the concerns of the public continue to rate it as a serious pu...

Background This paper presents follow-up data from a qualitative study of a Big Lottery funded ‘Well London’ project; an initiative set up to improve the health and well-being of Londoners living in areas historically marked by social, economic and environmental deprivation. The project introduced a series of health interventions: healthy eating, p...

Background This paper examines how individual and area-level contextual factors shape participation in a community-based development and health promotion intervention. Well London was a 3-year community development and health promotion programme for improving health behaviours (physical activity and healthy eating) and mental health and wellbeing i...

The present study evaluated the impact of a national school programme of universal free healthy breakfast provision in Wales, UK. A cluster randomised controlled trial with repeated cross-sectional design and a 12-month follow-up. Primary outcomes were breakfast skipping, breakfast diet and episodic memory. Secondary outcomes were frequency of eati...

Objective: The present study evaluated the impact of a national school programme of universal free healthy breakfast provision in Wales, UK. Design: A cluster randomised controlled trial with repeated cross-sectional design and a 12-month follow-up. Primary outcomes were breakfast skipping, breakfast diet and episodic memory. Secondary outcomes wer...

In London and the rest of the UK, diseases associated with poor diet, inadequate physical activity and mental illness account for a large proportion of area based health inequality. There is a lack of evidence on interventions promoting healthier behaviours especially in marginalised populations, at a structural or ecological level and utilising a...

The paper draws on qualitative data collected in focus groups with primary school pupils in years three and five (ages 7-11 years), carried out as part of a wider study evaluating the Primary School Free Breakfast Initiative in Wales. A total of 16 focus groups were carried out across eight schools to examine pupil's perceptions of food and food re...

Development and validation of a questionnaire to measure children's attitudes towards breakfast. A pilot study was used to select questionnaire items and assess test-retest reliability. The questionnaire was then administered to a larger sample of children together with a dietary recall questionnaire. Randomly selected subsets of these children als...

To examine school-level relationships between deprivation and breakfast eating behaviours (breakfast skipping and the healthfulness of foods consumed) in 9-11-year-old schoolchildren and to examine whether attitudes towards eating breakfast mediated these relationships. Cross-sectional survey. One hundred and eleven primary schools in Wales. Year 5...

To evaluate the validity and reliability of a dietary recall questionnaire, designed for group-level comparisons of foods eaten at breakfast and intake of fruits, vegetables, sweet items and crisps. Validity was assessed relative to 24-h dietary recall interviews, and reliability by comparing the baseline data with 4-month follow-up data. Fifty-eig...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report findings on an initiative set up by The Welsh Assembly Government to provide free, healthy breakfasts to primary school children throughout Wales. Design/methodology/approach The research employed a cluster randomised controlled trial design with 58 schools in South, West and North Wales. Quantitative...

School-based breakfast provision is increasingly being seen as a means of improving educational performance and dietary behaviour amongst children. Furthermore, recognition is growing that breakfast provision offers potential as a means of addressing social inequalities in these outcomes. At present however, the evidence base on the effectiveness o...

Development and validation of a questionnaire to measure children's attitudes towards breakfast.