Dr. Cathy Ure

Current positions

Lecturer in Public Health

Biography

Cathy joined the University of Salford in 2017. She has completed first degrees in both History and Psychology; and Masters in Management Learning and Media Psychology. She gained a Graduate Teaching Studentship to complete a PhD at the University of Salford. Her thesis was entitled: ‘Living with and beyond breast cancer: Exploring women’s use of social media to support psychosocial health’. Her PhD and current research interests focus on capability building to improve health outcomes in ‘on’ and ‘offline’ communities.

Cathy has been involved in a wide range of research projects that have drawn on her qualitative methods knowledge and skills. For example, she has worked as a Research Project Manager on an NIHR-funded stepped-wedge randomised control trial (2017-2022) entitled: Evaluation of the Communities in Charge of Alcohol (CICA) Programme in Greater Manchester http://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN81942890 led by Professor Penny Cook (University of Salford). This study aimed to provide vital evidence for local authorities planning community action on alcohol through training volunteers to become ‘alcohol health champions’ (AHCs). AHCs were trained to provide brief interventions at an individual level and become involved in alcohol licensing decisions to reduce the availability of alcohol at a community level. She is currently Principal Investigator on a project (working in partnership with Wigan Council) to determine whether a bottom-up approach involving the community to co-design solutions and co-evaluate outcomes is effective in creating safer communities.

Cathy has also worked with local organisations to evaluate services including third sector organisations (e.g., The Bureau, Glossop) and interventions. For example: Cooper-Ryan, AM and Ure, CM (2018), Making Every Contact Count: Evaluation of the use of MECC within the outpatient MSK Physiotherapy service and Bury Integrated MSK Service at Fairfield General Hospital.

Cathy is currently supervising three international PhD students. Yanni Wu’s PhD by Published Works focuses on: ‘Exploring psychological distress and expressive writing in Chinese breast cancer patients’, supervised with Professor Alison Brettle (University of Salford). The second explores ‘Social Enterprise applications to support financing strategies for the sustainability of Prosthetic and Orthotic Services in Cambodia’ (Sisary Kheng), supervised with Professor Malcolm Granat (University of Salford) and Professor Cheryl Metcalf (University of Southampton). The third focuses on ‘The Experiences of Pregnant Women to support maternal health outcomes using mobile pregnancy Applications in Nigeria’ (Hadijat Ige), supervised with Dr Anna Cooper-Ryan (University of Salford).

Cathy is a module leader on the Public Health Practitioner Degree Apprenticeship and MSc in Public Health programmes. She has a Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Areas of research

Public health , Social media, Digital health, Asset based community development, Visual methods, Qualitative