At MBARC, Babs is focussed on improving the health and wellbeing of communities, through Capacity Building, Commissioning Support and Community Empowerment. Her research about the priorities of the new Health and Wellbeing Boards for a client won the best social research poster award at a recent medical conference.

Babs and her team are working on: involving prisoners to undertake peer research on the provision of treatment and care for prisoners with long term health conditions; re-designing a debt and mental health advice service to better meet the needs of clients; recruiting community researchers to undertake peer research with older people living with HIV.

Thinking of new ideas and different ways to do things has helped her to start and manage innovative projects, with service-users. Examples include www.myhiv.org a patient-led online resource; a Public, Private and Voluntary sector partnership to implement a community pharmacy needle exchange throughout Ireland and New Perspectives, a tailored made self-management programme developed and delivered by and for people living with cancer.
Babs is also an experienced patient living with a long term medical condition!