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Dr Peter Van der Graaf

Associate Professor

Department: Nursing, Midwifery & Health

Peter is an Associate Professor in Public Health at 51, where he manages the AskFuse service. AskFuse is the rapid response and evaluation service of Fuse, the Centre for Translational Research in Public Health, which supports collaborative projects between academics and policy and practice partners in the North East of England and beyond.

He is Deputy-Lead for the Knowledge Mobilisation and Implementation Science theme within the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) for the North East and North Cumbria (NENC), and a member of the NIHR Public Health Intervention Response Studies Team (PHIRST Fusion), which supports local authorities across the UK with evaluating their interventions. For example, he is leading an evaluation of the Whole Systems Approach to Child Healthy Weight in Dundee applying a peer research approach.  

Previously, he held a prestigious NIHR Knowledge Mobilisation Research Fellowship, using ethnographic research to evaluate a System-Led Improvement Approach to Best Start in Life that developed professional peer reviewers between local authorities to improve evidence-informed decision making.

Peter Van der Graaf

Peter is interested in the interface between research, practice and policy making and how this interface facilitates (or hinders) social improvement processes at local, regional, national and international levels. He conducts research on knowledge mobilisation in public health, with a focus on the wider determinants of health (e.g. housing, health landscapes, urban regeneration) and how they affect people's health and wellbeing.

  • Simon Douglas Start Date: 10/09/2024
  • Paige Elliott Managing pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy in children with cystic fibrosis in the highly effective modulator era. Start Date: 01/10/2023
  • Ruth Muscat Enhancing knowledge mobilisation skills and training for health librarians: comparative case study analysis in the North East and North Cumbria Start Date: 11/07/2022

  • Sociology PhD June 30 2009
  • Sociology MA July 15 1998


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