Eleanor Hoverd

I joined the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford in April 2025. I will be working with the Workforce and Learning Research Group as a realist researcher, to improve our understanding of workforce challenges in primary care and maternity services, particularly in under-served communities.

I have an adult nursing background and have worked within the NHS in hospital settings and primary care in inner-city Coventry and the West Midlands. I have also worked as a national research lead with the Chief Nursing Officer for England’s policy and strategy unit, as well as the Regional Research Delivery Network West Midlands as a clinical research nurse. These experiences have developed my research passions around inclusion, research equity (in relation to race and ethnicity), health inequalities, patient public involvement and co-production.

Prior to joining Oxford, I completed a National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) clinical doctoral research fellowship to understand inclusion and participation in health and care research with people from Black communities in the UK (undertaken at the University of Warwick and hosted by the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust). This work aims to publish recommendations for policymakers, funders, ethics committee members, health care professionals, researchers and research delivery staff to improve inclusion and participation for people from Black communities in health and care research. It also aims to provide a theory to support future development of interventions to make research more inclusive for people from Black communities.

I gained a master’s in health research at the University of Warwick in 2020, undertaking a realist review on the informed consent process with under-served communities in health and care research. As part of an NIHR funded pre-doctoral clinical research fellowship at Warwick, I also undertook a qualitative project to co-produce a patient public involvement community research hub with NIHR public research champions.

I have extensive experience of leading patient public involvement initiatives in prior roles. I am a true advocate for ensuring the patient voice is heard and that their views are acted upon and embedded into the design, delivery and sharing the findings of health and care research.

Current Research projects

- Developing an inclusive health and care research system with people from Black African Diaspora Communities (NIHR CDRF, grant number 302121)

- Patient Public Involvement (PPI) Lead on an NIHR funded testing the effectiveness of a healthy eating and physical activity programme for people from Black African and Black Caribbean backgrounds (University of Leicester)