Professor of Primary Care & Community Health
University of Manchester
Country:
United Kingdom
About Chris Todd:
Chris has some 30 years research experience. He read Psychology at the University of Durham and obtained BA (Hons), MA and PhD. Following his PhD he held post doctoral research posts in Northern Ireland and Cambridge and became Director of Health Services Research Group at the Institute of Public Health, University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Wolfson College. Since 2001 he has been at the University of Manchester as Professor of Primary Care and Community Health and until the end of 2013 was Director of Research in The School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work. He is a Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow of The British Psychological Society.
Chris has a large portfolio of research funding and held and/or currently holds grants from UK funders including Department of Health; National Health Service; Medical Research Council; National Institute for Health Research, Service Delivery and Organisation Programme, Research for Patient Benefit and Programme Grants; MRC/NIHR Methodology Research Programme; National Cancer Research Institute; Community Fund; Cancer Research UK; Dimbleby Cancer Care; Breast Cancer Campaign; BUPA Foundation; Help The Aged (now AgeUK) and the European Commission, EC DGXII; EC FP5; EC FP7; EC ICT Policy Support Programme.
Chris is author/co-author on some 200 publications
Chris was a member of the European Commission DG12 Expert Working Party on research into postural stability and fall prevention in the elderly population. He has reviewed for a wide range of research committees and charities both in UK and overseas. He is currently a member of NIHR Health Services Delivery & Research Board and the Dimbleby Cancer Care Scientific Advisory Board. He has also served on German and pan-European research boards. He wrote The World Health Organisation’s policy synopsis on the prevention of falls amongst older people and was a member of the group which wrote the 2007 WHO Global Report on Falls Prevention.
On a personal note Chris sculls with Agecroft Rowing Club, and lives with his lawyer wife.
ProfouND Role:
Chris is the Director of ProFouND and leads on work packages 1 and 6.
Chris’s research interests span the following areas;
Fall Prevention Falling is very common amongst older people and is responsible for considerable disability and distress. Interventions such as exercise aimed at improving balance and increasing muscle strength can reduce falling amongst older people, but we still need to know a lot more about how to ensure such interventions are most effective. Much of Chris’s work relates to identifying how to encourage uptake and adherence to promote effectiveness of interventions. Chris led the Prevention of Falls Network Europe and currently leads a number of projects related to fall prevention. He also lead the ProFaNE team that developed the FES-I, a very widely used measure of fear of falling. His current work is focusing on interventions for people with visual impairments and using smartphones and other technologies to predict detect and prevent falls (FARSEEING). He is part of the EC’s European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing and leads the Prevention of Falls Network for Dissemination ProFouND.
Cancer and Palliative Care A major area of interest is how to support people during their last illness so that they can have maximum quality of life and remain with their family and friends. Chris’s group have been investigating access to palliative care services and the way that community based palliative care services, nursing services and social care, can help people to remain at home when they are seriously ill. His most recent studies have focused on supporting the family carers of people with palliative care needs, and the methodological challenges of palliative and end of life care research. He was co-PI on the MORECare project and played a central role in the Cancer Experiences Collaborative CECo leading work on methdology.
Breast cancer amongst older women. Breast cancer is prevalent amongst older women but evidence shows that older women are less likely to receive surgery and other standard interventions than their younger counterparts. Chris has a programme of studies with Dr Katrina Lavelle and Prof Nigel Bundred investigating aspects of the management of breast cancer.
Integrating nutrition into the care pathway for colorectal cancer patients. Chris works with Dr Sorrel Burden on a programme that uses the MRC Framework/Guidance for developing complex interventions in this case using nutritional interventions for cancer. The first phase of the work involved qualitative interviews with people with colorectal cancer. We are currently conducting a randomised controlled trial of a nutritional intervention in preoperative colorectal cancer patients.
