Projects per year
Personal profile
Biography
Sheri Oduola is a mental health nurse, social/psychiatric epidemiologist, and a fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Sheri gained a BSc in Mental Health Nursing from the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, King’s College London. She then completed an MSc in Health Services and Population Research and a PhD in Psychiatric Epidemiology at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London.
Clinically, she worked primarily with people living with psychotic disorders in inpatient and community settings.
Her research focuses on social factors that produce inequalities in the burden of mental health, mental healthcare, and long-term outcomes of severe mental illness in diverse populations (e.g., ethnic, gender minority groups and rural communities). She uses a mixed methods approach to make sense of complex health inequalities in minority groups by drawing on epidemiological techniques in electronic health records and qualitative approaches to explain why these disparities occur.
Sheri has been involved in several mixed methods and epidemiological research projects on psychoses and severe mental illness, including CRIS-FEP (supported by NIHR BRC Maudsley), MEDIATE (funded by NIHR – PDG), RESOLVE (funded by NIHR- HSD&R). She currently leads an NIHR-funded Mental Health Research Development project, which centres on bringing together key stakeholders and conducting extensive scoping work to identify mental health needs and priorities in Norfolk and Suffolk, particularly for the rural, coastal and migrant communities. The findings from this initial work will lay the foundations for a larger-scale programme of research for the next five years.
Key Research Interests
- Epidemiology, and social influences of the aetiology, course and outcome of psychosis and severe mental illness
- Pathways to care and health service utilisation.
- Public mental health interventions
- Physical health outcomes in psychosis
- Young people's mental health
- At-risk-mental-state psychosis
- Health disparities in minority groups
- Mental health in rural and coastal areas
Sheri supervises PhD and ClinPsyD students. She welcomes students interested in using epidemiological techniques (including electronic health records) for their PhD research.
Teaching Interests
As a Course Director, Sheri has demonstrated exceptional leadership skills. She designed, established, and led the first pre-registration MSc in Mental Health Nursing offered at UEA and enrolled the first cohort in 2019/20. She led the pre-registration MSc Mental Health Nursing course from 2019/23, which is a flagship School of Health Sciences course. Sheri also served as the Module lead for Research Methods across all fields of the MSc Nursing (i.e., Child, Adult, and Mental Health) programme between 2021 and 2024.
She currently teaches on the following modules:
HSC7201X – Principles and Practice of Health Research 1
HSC7204X- Principles and Practice of Health Research 2
HSC7206X – MSc Nursing Dissertation
HSCN6107Y- BSc Nursing Year 3 Option Module
Her teaching interests include:
Quantitative research methods
Ethnicity and mental illness
Sociology of mental illness
Psychoses
Administrative Posts
Sheri is a Visiting Lecturer and Researcher at King’s College London, SLaM Biomedical Research Centre and Cambridgeshire & Peterborough NHS Trust. And a member of the Mental Health Nurse Academics UK.
Areas of Expertise
- Epidemiology
- Clinical informatics
- Psychosis and severe mental illness
- Pathways to care and health service utilisation.
- Public mental health interventions
- Physical health outcomes in psychosis
- Young people's mental health
- Health disparities in minority groups
- Mental health in rural and coastal areas
Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):
External positions
Editor, Social Psychiatry & Psychiatric Epidemiology
2022 → …
Review Editor, Frontiers in Mental Health Services Journal
2021 → …
Keywords
- Epidemiology
- Mental Health
- Communities, Classes, Races
- Public Health, Health Services & Primary Care
Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years
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Changing the trajectories of mental health difficulties in Norfolk and Suffolk: a research-priority-setting project with patients, the public, clinicians, policymakers, and stakeholders
Oduola, S., Broomfield, N., Holmes, J., Khadjesari, Z., Notley, C., Parretti, H., Sanderson, K. & Zile, A.
National Institute for Health and Care Research
1/06/24 → 30/06/25
Project: Research
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RDS PIF - PPI group in planning
National Institute for Health and Care Research
26/06/23 → 25/09/23
Project: Research
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RDS PPI funding application
National Institute for Health and Care Research
16/11/22 → 28/02/23
Project: Research
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A comparison of pathways to care in at-risk mental states and first episode psychosis: A mental health electronic clinical records analysis in the East of England, UK
Murden, R., Allan, S. M., Hodgekins, J. & Oduola, S., 1 Mar 2025, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open Access -
A realist evaluation of social care practitioners’ experiences with and understanding of applied healthcare research
Birdi, G. K., Wong, G., MacPhee, M., Howe, J., Upthegrove, R., Moore-Hales, C., Higgs, S., Walsh, A., Ahern, A., Allen, K., Habib, H., Nixon, K., Oduola, S. & Maidment, I., 21 Mar 2025, In: The British Journal of Social Work. bcaf045.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open AccessFile2 Downloads (Pure) -
Associations between rural/urban status, duration of untreated psychosis and mode of onset of psychosis: A mental health electronic clinical records analysis in the East of England, UK
Kaminska, K., Hodgekins, J., Lewis, J. R., Cardinal, R. N. & Oduola, S., Jun 2025, In: Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. 60, p. 1323–1334 12 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open AccessFile -
A systematic review of studies using translated versions of the Attribution Questionnaire (AQ-27) to measure public stigma towards people with schizophrenia
Thirkettle, C., Oduola, S., Black, S., McEntegart, L. & Beazley, P., Jul 2025, In: European Journal of Psychiatry. 39, 3, 100290.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open AccessFile1 Downloads (Pure) -
Changing the trajectories of mental health difficulties in Norfolk and Suffolk: a research-priority-setting project with patients, the public, clinicians, policymakers and other stakeholders—study protocol
Oduola, S., Morgan, C., Das-Munshi, J., Broomfield, N., Parretti, H., Sanderson, K., Notley, C., Zile, A., Morrissey, S., Khadjesari, Z. & Holmes, J., Jan 2025, In: BMJ Open. 15, 1, e093980.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open AccessFile35 Downloads (Pure)
Activities
- 1 Other
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Understanding help-seeking patterns for mental health difficulties among young people in rural populations
Sheri Oduola (Presenter), Joanne Hodgekins (Contributor), Emma Coombes (Contributor) & Andy Jones (Contributor)
Mar 2022Activity: Other activity types › Other