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Emma Adams

Emma Adams - Mental Health

Emma is a NIHR Doctoral Fellow based at Newcastle University. Prior to coming to England, she worked in a mental health hospital in Canada. Her research explores mental health, trauma, and substance use for people experiencing homelessness and she often uses co-production approaches to work with people with lived experience of homelessness. Emma’s work has a public health focus and often sits within community settings or the voluntary sector. 

Award Title: Career Development Award 

Start Date: 1st April 2022

End Date: 30th June 2023

Project title: Evidence synthesis: training, networking, and undertaking a systematic review around trauma, mental health, and homelessness 

Brief summary: People experiencing homelessness often face complex challenges around substance use, mental health and historical or recent trauma. Trauma can be an experience (physical or emotional) that is life-threatening, harmful, or out of the ordinary and has lasting impacts on all aspects of wellbeing. Much of the information we know about trauma within homeless populations focuses on events in childhood. However, there is a need to understand how trauma during homelessness impacts mental health if we want to ensure people experiencing homelessness have access to the right support at the right time. This career development award will seek to bring together all the current evidence on this area. Systematic reviews are often used to bring together information around a specific question and knowing how to conduct them well is key to research career development. This award provides an opportunity to learn about how to conduct systematic reviews, develop networks with researchers across health and social care, and work with individuals who have experienced homelessness to produce a systematic review of qualitative work exploring trauma in adults experience homelessness.  

Methods: A co-produced qualitative systematic review. 

Benefits anticipated: Address a current evidence gap for policymakers and service providers around trauma and its impact on mental health (including substance use) during experiences of adulthood homelessness.  Upskill people with lived experience in evidence synthesis and reviewing academic literature.  Provide a foundational knowledge for future NIHR Doctoral Fellowship to ensure future work address current gaps