The CPH Summer Studentship Programme: June to September 2025 - Now Closed

The Centre for Public Health (CPH) Summer Research Programme provides a unique opportunity for undergraduate students to participate in office and/or laboratory-based research during the summer months.  Each participant will be assigned to the research project of a Principal Investigator within CPH and will join an enthusiastic research team comprising academic staff, postdoctoral fellows, research assistants, PhD students, administrative and technical staff.  The projects will run for an eight-week period between June and September 2025.  Students will work on campus, or be in a position to work remotely from home.

Students currently enrolled for Biomedical Sciences, Medicine, Dentistry or a related discipline who have completed at least one year of full-time study from any UK Higher Education Institution are eligible to apply.  Each summer studentship pays a student stipend of £200 per week.  Students (including those from other UK institutions) who successfully complete the programme will be eligible for Degree Plus status upon graduation.

The application process is now open, and we have 10 Summer Studentship places on offer this year, with at least two that must be allocated to QUB Medical Students.   Please submit the following:

• A current CV including your full academic profile (or transcript)
• Your student number if you are a QUB student
• A covering letter stating your reasons for applying to the Programme with the Centre for Public Health and the year of study that you are completing this summer. 
• The names and contact details of two referees. 
• Your preferred project(s) and the reason why. 

Please email your application to the Centre Manager, Niamh McElherron – N.McElherron@qub.ac.uk by 5.00pm on Friday 4th April 2025.  Please ensure that you indicate which project(s) you are interested in.   

We will be listing our projects below as soon as they become available.  CPH Principal Investigators have been notified of the call and will provide their projects to me by 21st March 2025 at the latest- so keep watching this space as our project list grows!

Niamh McElherron
Centre Manager
Centre for Public Health
N.McElherron@qub.ac.uk

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Describing the Use of Targeted Cancer Therapies in Northern Ireland: Patterns and Patient Characteristics - supervised by Dr Blánaid Hicks 

The landscape of cancer treatment has evolved dramatically in recent years, with the introduction of targeted therapies offering new hope for many patients. These treatments, designed to interfere with specific molecules involved in cancer growth and progression, have transformed outcomes for a range of cancers. Despite their increasing use, there is limited population-based information on who receives these therapies in NI and how they are used in real-world clinical practice.

This summer studentship offers an exciting opportunity to work with data from the Northern Ireland Cancer Registry to describe the use of targeted cancer therapies across Northern Ireland in 2018 and 2019. The project will focus on:

• Identifying which targeted therapies were used in this period.
• Describing the characteristics of patients receiving these treatments, including their cancer type, demographics, and co-morbidities.

By analysing these patterns, the project aims to provide valuable insights into how targeted therapies are being implemented in clinical practice and who is benefitting from these advances in cancer care.

You will:

• Work with large, real-world datasets to conduct descriptive statistical analyses.
• Use statistical software such as STATA to explore treatment patterns and patient factors.
• Contribute to the growing evidence base on cancer treatment equity and access.
• Gain experience working with teams at the Centre for Public Health, the Northern Ireland Cancer Registry, and specialists in cancer and pharmacoepidemiology.
• Gain the chance to network with other undergraduate students engaged in public health research.
• Have access to training events, and opportunities to enhance your data analysis, research, and presentation skills.

This studentship is ideal for students interested in epidemiology, public health, health data science, or cancer research, who are keen to contribute to understanding and improving cancer treatment delivery.

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Can we identify chemotherapy induced neurotoxicity using real world data? - supervised by Dr Blánaid Hicks 

With advances in early diagnosis, treatments, and supportive care, more people are surviving a cancer diagnosis than ever before. However, one major challenge remains: chemotherapy-induced peripheral neurotoxicity (CIPN). This debilitating side effect affects an estimated two out of every three patients who receive chemotherapy. CIPN can be severe, sometimes forcing patients to reduce their chemotherapy dose or discontinue treatment altogether. Even more concerning, symptoms may persist in 20-30% of patients for up to five years post-treatment. While the causes of CIPN are not fully understood, emerging evidence suggests that certain medications taken alongside chemotherapy may increase the risk of nerve damage.

This project aims to shed light on these potential risk factors.

As part of this studentship, you will work with the Northern Ireland Cancer Registry to analyse data on all patients who received taxane chemotherapy in Northern Ireland during 2018 and 2019. Your work will involve conducting descriptive statistical analyses to:

• Estimate the proportion of patients who developed CIPN.
• Explore patient risk factors, including tumour characteristics, demographics, and co-morbidities.

You will gain hands-on experience in working with large, real-world datasets and using statistical software such as STATA.
Additional Opportunities.

In addition, you will have the chance to:

• Contribute to a systematic review exploring potential drug interactions and their impact on CIPN risk.
• Assist in the development of a questionnaire aimed at capturing patients’ experiences of living with CIPN.
• Obtain experience working alongside a dynamic team at the Centre for Public Health, the Northern Ireland Cancer Registry, and    experts in cancer epidemiology and pharmacoepidemiology.
• Be provided with opportunities to network with other undergraduate students undertaking public health research projects.
• Access to training events to develop your research and presentation skills.

This studentship is ideal for students with an interest in epidemiology, public health, cancer research, or data analysis, who are eager to make a meaningful contribution to understanding and improving outcomes for cancer patients.

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Examining the characteristics of cancer ‘super-survivors’ in Northern Ireland - supervised by Dr Damien Bennett and Dr Helen Mitchell

Certain cancer types have very poor survival outcomes; for example, less than 40% of Northern Ireland patients with pancreatic, liver and lung cancer survive more than one year after their primary diagnosis, and less than 20% survive five years.  There has been recent interest in examining people who survive for long periods following diagnosis with these often-lethal cancers, with these often dubbed ‘super-survivors’.

The Northern Ireland Cancer Registry is a high quality, population-based registry that collects information on all cancer diagnoses in Northern Ireland and produces the official statistics reports for all cancers for the region. 

The project aims to:

• identify pancreatic, liver and lung cancer patients who have survived for long periods .
• examine key patient, clinical, demographic and socio-economic factors that distinguish these patients from those with poor survival.

A Literature Review is needed to assess novelty and importance of suggested work

Pre-requisites:

You do not need experience in statistical analysis to apply, but an interest in developing statistical analysis skills would be of benefit and support in this regard will be provided.  

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Rare Diseases - supervised by Professor A J McKnight

Are you interested in rare diseases?  Do you know that one in every 17 people are affected by rare disease, including over 110,000 people across Northern Ireland.

• One third of children living with a rare disease won’t live to see their 5th birthday.
• Rare diseases account for 35% of deaths in the first year of life.
• 95% of rare diseases have no approved treatment. 
• While >75% of rare diseases have a molecular (typically genetic) cause, patients wait on average 5 years to receive an accurate diagnosis, with many receiving a wrong diagnosis.

This summer studentship offers an exciting opportunity to work with our established rare disease team (Rare Disease Focus: supporting rare disease throughout all communities), meeting with children, young people, and parents affected by rare diseases.  We are keen to co-develop with families, public-facing information to support people affected by rare diseases, improving understanding of genetic testing in this rapidly moving translational research environment.  This project will focus on

• A review of the literature exploring what tools are available internationally
• An interview with a member of the NI genetic team to understand their perspective of genetic testing for young people and interactions with parents.
• An interview with a representative of a relevant rare disease charity.
• A focus group with children, young people, and / or their parents to help co-design information that suits their needs around genetic screening, testing, and / or diagnosis.
• Developing video shorts that help convey key information.

By analysing data gathered from published and new research, the student will support development of our emerging NI rare disease information hub.   They will gain skills in qualitative research, communicating complex topics to families, and help make an impact for people living with rare diseases across Northern Ireland.

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A scoping review of concussion protocols and policies in sailing sports - supervised by Dr Neil Heron

This studentship will undertake a scoping review of concussion protocols and policies in sailing sports and from this review of the literature, develop a concussion protocol that could be utilised within sailing.

Things to consider:

• What is sailing?
• How do you do a scoping review? 
• What guidelines are available for concussion assessment? Does it matter if its professional or amateur sailing sports? 

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A scoping review of extraction methods used for suspected spinally injured athletes when in the water  - supervised by Dr Neil Heron

Field-based sports such as rugby and football have well developed protocols for extracting suspected spinally injured athletes from the field of play. However, guidelines for removing this patient group from water are less clear. The aim of this project is therefore to undertake a scoping review of extraction menthods for suspected spinally injured athletes when in the water. 

Things to consider:

• How do you do a scoping review? 
• What guidelines are available for removing suspected spinally injured athletes from traditional field-based sports such as football and rugby?
• What guidelines are available for removing suspected spinally injured athletes from the water? 

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An evaluation of media coverage of cancer research in Northern Ireland. - supervised by Professor Helen Coleman

Media coverage of cancer research is a very important aspect of research dissemination, to ensure that our research reaches a wide audience that includes patients and the public. However this is potential for biases to be present in the both the research that is promoted, and in the messages portrayed. The aim of this project is to evaluate outputs from Queen’s University Belfast communications on cancer research over the past decade. We wish to investigate if there are any sex disparities in media coverage based on the research teams, photos/accompanying images used, or any differences in the portrayal of topics, compared with the research profile of the University. The results could be used to highlight areas of underrepresentation for future cancer research coverage. 

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Understanding the malignant potential of gastric metaplasia of the oesophagus: a population-based study. - supervised by Professor Helen Coleman

Barrett’s oesophagus is a premalignant condition to a type of oesophageal cancer called oesophageal adenocarcinoma. Oesophageal adenocarcinoma is often diagnosed at late stage, and therefore often have poor survival outcomes. Upon a diagnosis of Barrett’s oesophagus, patients are usually entered onto a surveillance programme and are invited for endoscopies every 3 to 5 years which provides an opportunity to improve outcomes by detecting any changes such as dysplasia and cancer early. 

Barrett’s oesophagus is characterised by the normal squamous epithelium of the oesophagus being replaced by columnar epithelial cells which can be either gastric or intestinal in nature. Previous work from the Northern Ireland Barrett’s register has shown that the risk of neoplastic progression for Barrett’s oesophagus patients to high grade dysplasia or oesophageal adenocarcinoma is low, at 0.33% per year (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24700439/). Recent evidence has highlighted that the malignant potential of gastric metaplasia may be even lower (https://gut.bmj.com/content/gutjnl/73/5/729.full.pdf). Further evidence is needed to inform whether Barrett’s oesophagus patients with gastric metaplasia only, should be discharged from surveillance programmes

The Northern Ireland Barrett’s register includes all incident cases of Barrett’s oesophagus diagnosed in Northern Ireland since 1993. The aim of this project is to conduct a text-mining re-review of pathology reports to distinguish gastric from intestinal metaplasia cases within the Northern Ireland Barrett’s register. All data analysis/review will take place within the secure data environment of the NI Cancer Registry, Centre for Public Health on the Royal Victoria Hospital campus. 

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Analysis of qualitative data for people accessing a telephone support tool for TB or withing the COVID epidemic in Uganda (please note two projects involved for two students - supervised by Professor Rosalind Parkes-Ratanshi

This studentship will undertake a qualitative analysis on interviews that have been translated and transcribed. As this will need some simple qualitative analysis skills these will be provided by the social science team in Uganda. This could result in a manuscript to submit to a journal if fully completed. This will require working with researchers in Uganda as they will need to do some analysis as well. 

There are two  available datasets to analyse – one for a study of people living with TB using it to remember to take their medication and also one for mothers using the tool for nutrition support in the COVID 19 pandemic.
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Development of question and answer pairs for an AI training dataset in sexual and reproductive health for Africa - supervised by Professor Rosalind Parkes-Ratanshi

The Hub for AI in maternal, sexual and reproductive health in Africa is developing conversational agents for sexual and reproductive health advice for vulunerable populations. We need to train the conversational agents on high quality advice. To do this we need to develop training dataset with questions and well researched answers that the conversational agent can provide. This project is to either generate your own questions or to work on questions submitted from members of the public in Uganda and other African countries, to research quality answers (ideally referencing national/ international e.g. WHO) guidelines. These question and answer pairs will be added to a dataset of around 5000 question and answer pairs already developed to enrich the dataset. You will be working with colleagues in Uganda to complete the work (HASH team and medical staff). 

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ImPACT Stroke: Improving psychological wellbeing using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy among stroke survivors - supervised by Noleen McCorry

Up to 75% of stroke survivors will experience some form of cognitive difficulty and consequently are less able to access psychological therapies and other interventions. This situation can compound poor psychological wellbeing, quality of life, and social isolation for stroke survivors and their families. Our research team has designed a brief psychological intervention, called ImpACT Stroke, with significant input from stakeholders, specifically tailored for stroke survivors with cognitive impairment, delivered remotely in a small group involving the stroke survivor and using family members as support persons to help achieve therapeutic goals.
Participants who consented to our take part in this research were allocated randomly to either the ImPACT Stroke intervention (online course) or to the control group. We are now analysing the results of the pilot trial to examine any changes in wellbeing (quality of life, anxiety, depression) among participants who completed the intervention, compared to those in the control group. We are also analysing qualitative data (derived from interviews with stroke survivors, their family members and healthcare professionals supporting people with stroke) to explore participants’ experience of the intervention including acceptability, feasibility, and barriers and facilitators of implementing the ImPACT Stroke intervention in practice.
The student will join our research team of health service researchers, psychologists, stroke clinicians and stroke survivors. They will work, with support and supervision from members of the team to assist with data input, basic analyses, and reporting/ visualisation of findings. This will involve both quantitative and qualitative data analysis, and the student will be provided with the necessary support to allow them to work within their competency. The student will learn valuable skills in data management, analysis, report writing, collaborative working, and project management.

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Validation of eye health education messages for animation and voice drama in Tanzania - supervised by Dr Ving Fai Chan

The partnership project, named African Creativity for Eyesight (ACE) is led by an experienced multi-disciplinary team. Recognising the need for community involvement and co-developing eye health education strategies, the team co-developed an arts-based eye health education strategy, which utilises a package of free-hand animation and voice drama to overcome socio-cultural barriers towards service uptake, hence improving eye health-seeking behaviour and improving the vulnerable populations’ vision and well-being. 

After a listening workshop conducted in April 2024, a nation-wide competition was conducted to open the opportunity to artists in the country to submit their entries based on the feedback received from the stakeholders who participated in the listening workshop. Subsequently, judging and validation workshops were conducted in February 2025 to select three best entries and validate the messages included in the entries.

In this summer project, the student will be required to:

•  Analyse the responses collected from judging and validation workshops conducted in Tanzania.
•  Critically interpret the findings and provide practical recommendations to the implementing partner

The project is suitable for any student who is  interested in incorporating arts into health education and qualitative research.

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Laughter Yoga to improve Resilience among Breast Cancer Patients: a scoping review - supervised by Dr Meenakshi Sharma  and Dr Charlene McShane

Each year, approximately 1,500 individuals in Northern Ireland are diagnosed with breast cancer. Research led by our team at QUB indicates that interventions aimed at improving emotional wellbeing and resilience could greatly benefit this population. Studies have shown that laughter yoga can significantly reduce perceived stress levels and enhance both physical and psychological health among cancer patients. 

To our knowledge, laughter yoga has not yet been explored in the context of cancer patients in Northern Ireland. This represents a novel area for investigation as part of the proposed (Laughter Yoga to improve Resilience among Breast Cancer Patients (LYRIC) in Northern Ireland) partnership, which will involve researchers, breast cancer patients, healthcare professionals, patient advocacy groups, and a laughter yoga expert.

We are seeking a dedicated student to join our team and conduct a scoping review to better understand the potential impact of laughter yoga as an intervention to improve quality of life, emotional wellbeing, and resilience among breast cancer patients. In addition to leading the scoping review, the student will have the opportunity to participate in workshops led by the team and interact with our partners. The student will be a member of the Cancer Epidemiology Research Group based in the Centre for Public Health and have the opportunity to observe and participate in training workshops and group meetings. There will also be opportunity to be included as a named co-author on any resulting publication from the scoping review. This studentship offers a valuable opportunity to contribute to important research that could positively impact the lives of breast cancer patients.

Objectives:
 To conduct a scoping review to evaluate the impact of laughter yoga on the quality of life, stress and resilience of breast cancer patients, with a focus on the UK population.

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Exploring preconception health behaviour change interventions  - supevised by Dr Laura McGowan and Dr Rebekah Rees

The preconception period has been identified as a crucial time for influencing not only pregnancy outcomes, but also future maternal and child health, and prevention of long-term medical conditions. 

This project will involve secondary analysis of data relating to the topic of preconception healthcare and involve analysis (including systematic reviewing methods, statistical methods (using SPSS)), behaviour change techniques coding and write-up in order to prepare impactful papers for publication. This will involve exploring the behaviour change basis of preconception healthcare interventions and using novel methods, such as AI to aid behaviour change coding and interpretation.

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