About
Cindy Brooks is a Research Fellow based at the Public Policy Unit who is undertaking an Academic Social Research Secondment within the Civil Service. She is also undertaking a Social Impact Doctoral Scholarship at the School of Health Sciences. Cindy is a medical sociologist who combines her qualitative research skills and creative arts based practice to inform co-producing innovations to support health and wellbeing.
Research
Research groups
Research interests
- Creative arts-based research practice and reflexivity
- Co-producing innovations to support health and wellbeing
- Evaluating implementation of innovations
Current research
Cindy Brooks is a Research Fellow based at the Public Policy Unit who is undertaking an Academic Social Research Secondment within the Civil Service. She is also undertaking a Social Impact Doctoral Scholarhsip at the School of Health Sciences. Cindy recently conducted research for two ARC Wessex funded projects focused on investigating deprescribing for people with dementia or mild cognitive impairment in primary care (STOP-DEM) and developing a training programme to support the delivery of person-centred care in home care settings (CHAT&PLAN). She was also recently based within the ARC Wessex Implementation Team, where she led with Dr Michelle Myall a project to co-produce an innovative online toolkit to support the implementation of innovations in health and social care. Cindy led a Consultation working-group in support of the School of Health Sciences Athena Swan application in 2024.
Cindy leads projects using creative co-produced innovations to support health and wellbeing in society.
Recent research and enterprise activities:
A walk in the park: A co-produced innovative nature-themed visual-art and music video resource to enhance wellbeing during Covid-19. Working with UoS students, public contributors, John Hansard Gallery, Turner Sims and UoS Health and Wellbeing Community Hub, co-creation and evaluation of the resource will involve interactive online workshops relating to piano music and art created by Cindy. Knowledge exchange activity will involve evaluation of the impact of stakeholder involvement from visual arts, music and nature related organisations in the video resource launch event. Funded by the FELS Knowledge Exchange and Enterprise Fund at the University of Southampton.
Co-creating a nature-themed visual art and music video to support wellbeing during Covid-19 and beyond. Working with local public contributors, John Hansard Gallery, Turner Sims and UoS Health and Wellbeing Community Hub, co-creation and evaluation of the resource will involve interactive online workshops relating to piano music and art created by Cindy. Funded by the Public and Community Engagement Fund Awards, Public Engagement Research Unit at the University of Southampton.
Implementation and evaluation of Creating Learning Environments for Compassionate Care (CLECC) which aims to identify, characterise and explain sources of variation on implementation processes and outcomes and to better understand the complex mechanisms in implementing an intervention such as CLECC. Funded by NIHR ARC Wessex/NHS England.
Co-production, piloting and evaluation of an online Implementation Toolkit to support the successful implementation of research outputs and innovations into health and social care practice. Funded by NHS England NHS Insights Prioritisation Programme.
Families and Friends in Bereavement Study has developed an online intervention to support families and friends bereaved during the COVID-19 pandemic. Created and produced visual art, music and video resources for “A space to pause” section on the online intervention www.familiesinbereavement.org.uk
Evaluation of polypharmacy action learning sets designed to reduce inappropriate polypharmacy by General Practitioners and Pharmacy Professionals. Funded by Health Education England and Wessex Academic Health Science Network (Wessex AHSN).
Evaluation of electronic repeat dispensing services in Wessex. Funded by Wessex Academic Health Science Network (Wessex AHSN).
International study exploring perceptions of sharing art online on wellbeing.
Other recent projects:
Leading an Independent evaluation of a New Care Models (NCM) initiative to improve stroke services across Dorset.
Co-leading a rapid insight case study of remote patient consultations in Wessex in response to COVID-19.
Rapid evidence synthesis on rehabilitation and COVID-19, deconditioning since the onset of the pandemic, frailty, multidisciplinary teams and the community.
Research design of a Hydration e-learning study.
Contributing to Independent evaluations of Wessex Vanguard New Care Models [Dorset, Isle of Wight and North East Hampshire and Farnham].
Research projects
Publications
Biography
Cindy Brooks is a Research Fellow based at the Public Policy Unit who is undertaking an Academic Social Research Secondment within the Civil Service. She is also undertaking a Social Impact Doctoral Scholarship at the School of Health Sciences. Cindy has a background in Medical Sociology with substantial experience of leading health and social care research. Cindy's research, enterprise and implementation interests focus upon using creative qualitative methods to co-create and implement innovations to support health and wellbeing. She has recently led medicine optimisation projects focused upon reducing inappropriate polypharmacy and evaluating experinences of using electronic repeat dispensing (eRD) services. Previous research Cindy has been involved in include a mixed methods research, evaluation and implementation study to improve the delivery of nutrition and hydration to people living with dementia in the community (funded by the Burdett Trust, Bournemouth University) leading to the design of an innovative person-centred tool. Other projects include exploring the experiences of women aged 70 years and over living with breast cancer (funded by Macmillan, University of Southampton) and exploring patients', carers' and professionals' experiences of cancer of unknown primary site (funded by Dimbleby Cancer Care, University of Southampton).