Dr Ashra Khanom is a Senior Research Fellow in Health Services Research at Swansea University, Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences, Patient and Public Involvement Lead for PRIME Centre Wales, a research centre focusing on primary and emergency care and Research Development Advisor for Health and Care Research Wales (HCRW).
Ashra’s main interests lie in the area of prevention and early intervention addressing health inequities and unequal access to health care use using linked health data, novel patient and public involvement and engagement, and collaboration with the NHS, third sector organisations and international partners. Ashra’s research with asylum seekers and refugees (HEAR and HEAR2) forms part of the British Medical Association (BMA) Refugee and asylum seeker patient health toolkit2. She was awarded the Health and Care Research Wales Public Involvement and Engagement Award and Swansea University’s Research and Innovation Early Career Researcher Award.
Currently, she is co-leading on an NIHR, HS&DR awarded BE SURE study and is academic lead on the HCRW RfPPB award, CYMELL. The BE SURE study is across four ambulance services and four emergency departments exploring disparities in injury presentation between ethnic minorities and white British people. The study includes Peer Researcher involvement, 5-year routine data, questionnaires, focus groups, and interviews. The CYMELL study is developing and piloting a community-based intervention with diabetes nurses and community influencers to increase the uptake of follow-up foot, eye, and kidney checks among people from an ethnic minority background. The study involves an animator and marketing consultant to develop a mixture of languageless and written health information on the importance of keeping up regular diabetes checks. Ashra is also working with MATZero, a company which is looking to provide sustainable heating solutions to refugee camps to improve health and wellbeing and is a co-applicant on PEER MIST project developing peer led movement-based Intervention to improve mental health outcomes for asylum seekers and refugees.
Outside of work Ashra is a treasurer and trustee of Neath Port Talbot BME Association and works closely with MIND Neath Port Talbot on projects to improve the wellbeing of people living in her community. She contributed to the Welsh Government’s Health and Social Care Committee report 'Connecting the dots: tackling mental health inequalities in Wales' on 19 December 2022