OU academic awarded prestigious Accelerator grant

Open University (OU) academic Dr Jenny Douglas has been selected for a prestigious Accelerator Award from the Wellcome Trust. The grant of £ 153,273 will fund research into improving black women’s health and wellbeing in the UK.

The Wellcome Trust Accelerator Awards support researchers of Black, Bangladeshi and Pakistani heritage in the UK to undertake activities that put them in a stronger position to reach their next career stage, as they are currently underrepresented in research funding and experience higher rates of career attrition

On receiving the funding, Dr Douglas, who is a Senior Lecturer in Health Promotion, said:

“I am delighted. This is the first time the OU has had funding for researching Black women’s health and wellbeing. This Award is important because it will enable the development of an evidence base on Black women’s health and wellbeing. We know of some existing inequities in the health and wellbeing of Black women, for example maternal mortality, but there are many more areas where Black women experience poorer health. This research will enable us to bring together a specific and comprehensive database on the intersectional factors that influence the health and wellbeing of Black women and to establish a Research Centre where individuals, researchers, practitioners, policy makers, activists and politicians can access this information. The overall aim is to lead to an improvement in the health and wellbeing of Black women across the UK.”

The two-year project led by Dr Douglas will provide a robust evidence base on Black women’s health and wellbeing in the UK which is currently limited and disparate.

It will consist of three parts, beginning with an initial scoping review. This will be followed by a cohort study tracking health and well-being using secondary data and data from existing studies. Finally, a feasibility study will be undertaken on establishing a Black Women’s Health and Wellbeing Research Centre in the UK which would ensure that evidence on Black Women’s Health and wellbeing is brought together in one place and accessible to future researchers, policymakers and practitioners. (For this proposal, Black women are defined as African, Caribbean and Black Mixed Heritage women living in the UK).

Dr Jenny Douglas is Founder and Chair of the Black Women’s Health and Wellbeing Research Network at The Open University. She is a medical sociologist with a PhD in Women’s Studies from the University of York, an MA in Sociological Research in Health Care from the University of Warwick, an MSc in Environmental Pollution Control from the University of Leeds and a BSc (Hons) in Microbiology and Virology from the University of Warwick. She is an honorary member of the Faculty of Public Health, a director of the UK Public Health Register, and a Trustee of the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness. Jenny is the Open University Co-Sponsor of the WHEN 100 Black Women Professors Now programme.

Jenny is also a Research Affiliate of the Institute for Intersectionality Research and Policy, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada and a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Psychology at The George Washington University, Washington D.C., USA.