Dr Nick Axford
Implementation Lead and Associate Professor in Health Services Research
Expertise
Prevention and early intervention to improve child well-being
Biography
I joined PenARC in 2017. I work on a variety of projects concerned with evidence-based prevention and early intervention to improve child psychosocial outcomes, with a focus on service design and evaluation. I have undertaken studies involving a range of methods, including evidence reviews and randomised controlled trials, and covering a range of subject areas, such as bullying, child maltreatment, youth offending and social-emotional learning. I am particularly interested in forms of intervention that have the potential to achieve impact at scale, and in methods for developing and testing these – including co-production with users and the use of rapid cycle testing. I also enjoy engaging in debates about the value of evidence-based approaches in children’s services.
I am a Senior Associate of the Dartington Service Design Lab, a member of the board of the European Society for Prevention Research and a member of the evidence panels of the Early Intervention Foundation, the What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care and the Xchange online registry of evidence-based prevention programmes (hosted by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction).
Projects
- INTEGRATED – Integrated Parenting and Financial Wellbeing Support
- Strengthening partnerships through research to tackle male violence against women and girls in Plymouth
- Dental care for looked after children and adolescents: evidence synthesis and qualitative exploration
- Income maximisation for families: exploring implementation and impact
- Review of evidence on implementation in education
- PhD Project – Social prescribing and horticulture therapy for autistic adults
- Feasibility study and pilot outcomes evaluation of Becoming a Man
- Looked After Children Transition Hub
- COVID-19 Learning Partnership
- How can schools best support parents’ engagement in their children’s learning?
Publications
- Transporting an Evidence-based Youth Development Program to a New Country: A Narrative Description and Analysis of Pre-implementation Adaptation
- Becoming A Man (BAM) Feasibility study report
- Money Matters: Time for Prevention and Early Intervention to Address Family Economic Circumstances
- How can we optimise learning from trials in child and adolescent mental health?
- Engaging youth at risk of violence in services: Messages from research
- “What works” registries of interventions to improve child and youth psychosocial outcomes: A critical appraisal
- Health and wellbeing outcomes and social prescribing pathways in community-based support for autistic adults: A systematic mapping review of reviews
- Delinquency and Substance Use in Europe: Understanding Risk and Protective Factors.
- GP trainee responses to using SHERPA for multimorbidity consultations
- Engaging Young People During the COVID-19 Pandemic
- Promoting Learning from Null or Negative Results in Prevention Science Trials
- The effectiveness of a mentoring program for children aged 5-11 years: results from a randomized controlled trial
- The effectiveness of a therapeutic parenting program for children aged 6-11 years with behavioral or emotional difficulties: results from a randomised controlled trial
- The effectiveness of the KiVa bullying prevention rogram in Wales, UK: resuts from a pragmatic cluster randomized controlled trial
- PROTOCOL: A comparison of the effectiveness of cognitive behavioural interventions based on delivery features for elevated symptoms of depression in adolescents.
- How Can Schools Support Parents’ Engagement in their Children’s Learning? Evidence from Research and Practice.
- Health for all children
- Improving the Early Learning of Children Growing Up in Poverty: A Rapid Review of the Evidence.
- Tobacco, alcohol, and substence use in the perinatal period
- Perinatal parental mental health problems
- Intimate partner violence
- The effectiveness of Chance UK’s mentoring programme in improving behavioural and emotional outcomes in primary school children with behavioural difficulties: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial
- The effectiveness of the Inspiring Futures parenting programme in improving behavioural and emotional outcomes in primary school children with behavioural or emotional difficulties: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial
- Rapid Review on Safeguarding to Update the Healthy Child Programme 5 to 19
- Wrong’ answer, right response: learning from randomised controlled trials when you don’t get the answer you were hoping for
- Perfect bedfellows: why early intervention can play a critical role in protecting children – a response to Featherstone et al. (2014) ‘A marriage made in hell: child protection meets early intervention’
Other team members
Dr Bekkah Bernheim
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Dr Jennie Hayes
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Sarah O'Rourke
PhD Student
Sara Eddy
PhD Student
Dr Sarah Brand
Senior Research Fellow in Implementation Science
Kath Wilkinson
Research Fellow
Charlotte Hewlett
Research Manager
Dr Jo Day
Research Fellow