Clare Bambra (PhD, FAcSS, HonFPH) is Professor of Public Health at Newcastle University. Her research focuses on understanding and reducing health inequalities and she has published extensively.

Clare is a Fellow of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina; a Fellow of the UK Faculty of Social Sciences; an Honorary Fellow of the UK Faculty of Public Health; and an NIHR Senior Investigator.

Clare is a founding co-Director of Health Equity North and was an expert independent witness to the UK COVID-19 Public Inquiry.

She leads a number of large research collaborations including a Wellcome Trust funded project examining the north south health divide.

You can listen to Clare give evidence on health inequalities to the UK COVID-19 Public Inquiry or listen to her BBC Radio 4 interview on health and place or her public lecture.

Vic is a Medical Anthropologist whose research interests focus on the social determinants of health, health equity, and community-based participatory research. She is an interdisciplinary social scientist with expertise across applied public health, anthropology, and health geography. Her mixed methods research focuses on understanding and reducing inequalities in health. 

Methodologically she is a highly experienced qualitative researcher with particular expertise in advanced qualitative skills in longitudinal methods, co-produced data collection and analysis, participatory research, and ethnography. She is also experienced in using quantitative methods to analyse large health and lifestyle datasets. Vic is also experienced in using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) techniques to examine how multiple complex factors can influence health outcomes. 

Vic led the qualitative work packages on the North South Health Divide and conducted a year-long ethnography in Hartlepool, Blackpool, Hastings, and Torbay. She lived in these towns for 4-6 weeks, interviewed 140 people and documented the experiences of daily life in these places.  She also maintained a photographic diary of her fieldwork on Instagram @north_southdivide

Vic is currently writing up the findings but will be returning to the four towns in 2025 to share results and co-develop outputs with residents. 

Contact: victoria.mcgowan@ncl.ac.uk 

Kate is a doctor, researcher and organiser. She went to medical school in Sheffield before moving up to Newcastle-upon-Tyne for foundation training. Alongside clinical work she worked as a qualitative researcher on the North South Health Divides project leading the public perceptions study exploring how people in the North and South experience health inequalities. 

Kate has been involved in health justice organising for several years, including as co-ordinator of local Medact groups in the North East and Sheffield, supporting campaigns on 'Patients for Passports' and 'Health for a Green New Deal', and as Movement Organiser for Medact nationally. She currently works as a Clinical Teaching Fellow in Reproductive Health in County Durham & Darlington. Kate has a Masters in Humanitarian Studies from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. 

Tim is a research associate at Newcastle University. His research focuses on health inequalities, with a particular interest in how social inequity shapes mental health disparities. He views health inequalities as a matter of social justice, rooted in the need to address fundamental social inequities that disproportionately impact the most vulnerable people in society. 

As a qualitative researcher, Tim’s work aims to capture the lived experiences and perspectives of communities facing significant health challenges. For his PhD research, he conducted an in-depth qualitative study exploring stakeholder and community member understandings of "deaths of despair" – those due to drug, suicide, and alcohol-specific causes – in Middlesbrough and South Tyneside, interviewing 54 participants. This research sheds light on the complex structural and social factors that lead to deaths from these causes and highlights the importance of addressing the root causes of inequity.

Prior to undertaking his PhD, Tim worked at Dartmouth College in the US, supporting research projects studying unwarranted variance in neonatal healthcare outcomes. Tim holds an MSc in Global Public Health from Newcastle University.