Suzanne Sayuri Ii

Dr Suzanne Ii is a Senior Qualitative Researcher of Social Care in the Medical Sociology & Health Experiences Research Group. She is currently Chief Investigator and Co-PI on an NIHR School for Social Care Research, Research for Patient Benefit Programme funded research study that explores the experiences of care leavers who are transitioning out of care to a life of independence. She is also currently Co-PI on an NIHR School for Social Care Research, Three Schools Dementia Research Programme funded research study that explores the experiences of people with early-stage dementia and carers of people with dementia. The findings from both studies will be featured as new modules on Socialcaretalk.org.

Previously, she was the lead researcher on the NIHR School for Social Care Research-funded Socialcaretalk Formative Evaluation project. She conducted a formative evaluation of the new Socialcaretalk website to explore the needs of multiple stakeholder groups to identify gaps and streamline the website in its content and functioning. The overall objective of the project was to develop a website that is free, public-facing and accessible to everyone. She discussed the platform with members of the public via focus groups to understand and incorporate their insights into the website development.

Suzanne is an Early Career Researcher Editorial Board Member for Health Expectations 
and an Assembly Member for IMPACT (IMProving Adult Care Together), a UK centre for implementing evidence in adult social care. She is also a member of the NIHR Mentoring Programme Steering Group.

In her previous work as a Senior Researcher and Mixed Methods Researcher with the Interdisciplinary Research in Health Sciences (IRIHS) group, she explored patient engagement in the medicines lifecycle to identify gaps and create tools to improve the patient engagement landscape using mixed methods in the PARADIGM project. She also worked on the formative assessment and research study to understand boundary spanning in translational medical research. Suzanne also completed a study that explored the perceptions of tri-sectoral collaborations between academia, healthcare and industry to understand the barriers and facilitators to medical innovation adoption in the NHS.

Suzanne holds a BA (Cum Laude) in Anthropology, specialising in Physical Anthropology with a minor in Japanese from California State University, Fresno.  She holds an MA degree in East Asian Studies (Japanese Literature and Anthropology) from Stanford University.  Suzanne also holds an MSc degree in Visual Anthropology from the University of Oxford.  She completed her doctoral studies at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience's National Addiction Centre, King's College London, earning her a PhD in Addiction Sciences.  She used mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative) and an applied theoretical framework to explore the dietary and nutrient intake, dietary behaviours and physical changes that occurred in people receiving opioid agonist treatment therapy.