An academic with an enviable background in leading research in health and social care has joined De Montfort University Leicester (DMU).
Professor Bertha Ochieng is our first Professor of Integrated Health and Social Care, one of the few such positions in academia in the UK.
She started her career as a children’s nurse and her work has evolved and currently focuses on examining the healthcare needs of disadvantaged communities and how factors such as income, education, ethnicity and housing can impact on health and life chances. She has worked at Leeds, Bradford, Bedfordshire and London.
Prof Ochieng said she was “thrilled” to be the university’s first Professor of Integrated Health and Social Care.
She said: “The role is extremely broad and that's the most exciting bit of it, I will be working with colleagues across the university and doing research in communities that do not feel empowered.
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“With the cuts to social care budgets, Brexit, and the economic climate I feel this area is already significant and only going to become more so.”
Prof Ochieng is one of only a small cohort of female Black professors in the UK. There are currently only 20 Black female professors in the UK and Pro Ochieng said she was very pleased to be joining them.
She said DMU’s reputation as one of the UK’s leading universities for public good, its commitment to equality and progression for minority ethnic staff and students and its strong links to Leicester’s communities were key reasons behind the move.
She said: “This is a university that is bold and is not shy of saying what it has achieved. I am especially proud that our Chancellor is Baroness Doreen Lawrence, when you see what she has achieved in terms of social justice…I feel like I am in the right place here.”
Posted on Friday 24 November 2017