Dr Omotayo Joan Olajide

Joan qualified as a Dentist in 2004. After this, she obtained her postgraduate degrees in Public Health and has since worked in various Public Health Research/Intelligence roles across the Northwest as Public Health Commissioning analyst at Ashton, Leigh and Wigan Primary Care Trust; Senior Intelligence Analyst at Oldham Council; and Senior Public Health Epidemiologist at Liverpool City Council. She led a range of public health needs assessment programmes and impact assessment of delivered programmes including mental health, health protection, sexual health, childhood obesity and cancers.

She started her career in lecturing in 2011 as an Associate Lecturer in Public Health research methods at Teesside University. Thereafter, she worked as Oral Health Education Coordinator at Queen Mary University of University of London. Joan obtained a doctoral research scholarship at Teesside University to investigate the maximisation of effectiveness of oral health promotion interventions delivered to school children which she completed in 2015. Upon completion of her PhD, she worked as a Research Fellow at the same university and undertook some World Health Organisation funded systematic reviews on prevention of obesity in school children. Joan has also led on a range of projects across the Northwest having worked as Project Manager, Education Transformation Programme Manager/Lead at Health Education England Northwest to facilitate adequate upskilling, training and education of health and social care workforce.

Prior to joining us, Joan worked as the Education Transformation Lead at Health Education England (NHSE Northwest). She managed the delivery of a range of health and social care workforce development, training and education programmes to meet the growing and changing health needs in the Northwest region so that the health and social care workforce in the region is equipped with the right skills, knowledge and competence required to provide high-quality care. She led the development of a cancer education strategy and implementation plan for primary care workforce in Cheshire and Merseyside.

Joan has also worked as a Public Health Researcher/ Intelligence Analyst and Senior Epidemiologist across the North West leading on Cancer, Health Protection/ Immunisations, Mental and Sexual Health epidemiology, accessing and utilising a range of surveillance and monitoring tools. She has managed the delivery of various Joint Strategic Needs Assessment programmes and evaluation of numerous public health programmes including the NHS health checks, cancer screening programmes for young women and uptake of childhood immunisations in areas of low uptake. In addition to these, she led the development and delivery of public health intelligence work programmes in some of the teams she worked with.

Since 2011, Joan has been teaching in Higher Education and worked at Teesside University and at Queen Mary University of London. She coordinated the delivery and assessment of health promotion, research methods and utilising evidence in practice courses to undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as the provision of mentoring and pastoral care to her students.