Dr Ghazala Mir
- Position
- Associate Professor
- Areas of expertise
- health inequalities; health service development; ethnicity; religion; social inclusion; discrimination
- G.Mir@leeds.ac.uk
- Location
- 10.06 Worsley Building
- Faculty
- Faculty of Medicine and Health
- School
- School of Medicine
- Faculty profile link
- https://medicinehealth.leeds.ac.uk/medicine/staff/611/dr-ghazala-mir
Profile
Ghazala is an Associate Professor with research interests in health and social inequalities. Her research covers disadvantaged ethnic and faith communities, women and people with learning disability.
Ghazala led the international Socially Inclusive Cities Network exploring strategies that public services can use to ensure minority ethnic and religious groups receive effective and equitable support. This international work involved Kenyan and Nigerian partners and a follow on project involves a broader range of African academics, practitioners, voluntary organisations and policymakers.
These Networks were developed through activity that Ghazala is leading within the interdisciplinary Inequalities Research Network to support joint work towards a fairer society. IRN is based within the Leeds Social Sciences Institute.
Ghazala has been a health inequalities researcher at the University of Leeds since 1999 and an Associate Professor since 2011, leading the Health and Social Care Research Group between 2008 and 2010.
Her research projects focus on the experience of people underserved by health services and seldom heard in decision making about health policy and practice. She is a founder and Chair of the multidisciplinary Inequalities Research Network and has led work to highlight key research priorities in her field; Ghazala is particularly interested in research on interventions that reduce health inequalities. Her research has been published in case studies or good practice by the Chief Medical Officer and the Economic and Social Research Council.
Ghazala has supervised PhD students in areas related to her research interests and teaches on various undergraduate and postgraduate courses. She leads the Health Service Research module for the International Masters in Public Health programme and has delivered various teaching sessions and workshops for medical and nursing students. These include: Research Skills, Religion and Health, Qualitative Research Methods, Individuals and Populations, Communication Skills. Externally, she teaches on the MSc in Global Mental Health at the University of Glasgow and on the Cambridge Muslim College Diploma course on Contextual Islamic Studies & Leadership .
Ghazala has substantial experience of translating her research findings into policy and practice through education and training, engagement with policy bodies and participatory research that brings together service users, practitioners and policymakers in order to develop health services. She was a member of the Government Task Force on Learning Disability and co-Chair of the Ethnicity and Learning Disability Subgroup. She has also contributed to Advisory Groups for various national bodies including the Department of Health, Care Quality Commission and Disability Rights Commission and has acted as a member of the National Institute of Health Research HS&DR Research Funding Board. She is currently a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disability and Director of the Ethnicity Training Network. Ghazala is also a Postgraduate Research Tutor at the Leeds Institute of Health Sciences
Responsibilities
- Chair, Inequalities Research Network
- Postgraduate Research Tutor
Research interests
Ghazala's research covers health inequalities affecting people from minority ethnic and faith communities, women and people with learning disability. Her academic activity focuses on addressing and preventing social exclusion in health and social care settings. She is currently leading an evaluation of culturally adapted therapy for depression in a deprived area of Bradford and is overseeing trials of this therapy in Istanbul and Lahore.
Her previous research studies have involved developing the culturally adapted intervention for depression; facilitating participatory groups to address infant mortality amongst women in groups at highest risk; and improving health and social care services for people with disabilities and minority ethnic/Muslim populations. Ghazala is also Director of the Ethnicity Training Network, which promotes the transfer of research evidence into health and social care policy and practice. Further details of her research can be found at the following links: