Gargi Naha

What Faculty are you based in?

Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences

How did you come to study at Swansea University?

I still remember seeing a welcome poster in ‘Bangla’ near Fulton House back in early 2022, during my early days as a research officer at Swansea University Medical School. And to be honest, that poster made me feel very happy, I felt seen and included.

Moving on, during late 2022/early 2023 I saw a call for an ESRC PhD studentship. That’s when I knew this was my opportunity to study at Swansea University. So, I applied for it and after three rounds of shifting, I was selected for the PhD studentship award. 

What is your research topic?
Using a mixed-methods sequential exploratory design my research aims to investigate the role of sex and deprivation on young people’s experience of emergency acute asthma care and the outcomes following Emergency Department presentation in Wales.
The study will begin with a scoping review followed by co-developing and co-producing the qualitative data involving young people aged 10 -17 with a history of ED presentation for acute asthma care, their parents, asthma healthcare providers, and school staff in Wales. The findings from the qualitative interviews and focus groups would feed into the quantitative part of the study and help refine the research question to analyse routine-linked data from the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) databank. Finally, the qualitative and quantitative findings will be synthesised to help build the evidence base to develop a more personalised treatment plan for young people with asthma.

What led to your interest in this area?
Being born and raised in India and being trained as a medical doctor, I have seen and experienced sex/gender-related disparities in multiple places and various forms.
In general, the conversation around women’s health is usually confined to Reproductive and sexual health(SRH). Therefore, I wanted my research to focus on something else, other than SRH. Because women's health is a sum of all the organ systems in a woman’s body and not just the SRH.

What do you hope to achieve with your research?

It is important to note that asthma is known as an ambulatory care-sensitive condition, i.e., with effective management and treatment, a proportion of emergency admissions related to acute exacerbation of asthma could be prevented.
Therefore, I hope that my research can contribute to help build the evidence base to develop a more personalised treatment plan for Children and Young People living with asthma. This in turn will help reduce the acute exacerbation of asthma which will reduce the pressure on already stretched NHS Emergency Departments

What are the best things about conducting your research at Swansea University?
I think the best thing about conducting my research at Swansea University is the fact that I get to work with an amazing supervisory team consisting of specialists from various sub-specialities of public health such as health data science, health protection, health promotion and health systems.
Also, Swansea University hosts the SAIL databank and one of the main reasons I joined this PhD is to learn more about health data science. So, it’s an absolute pleasure to do my PhD from here.
Last but not least, I love the fact that the Singleton campus is just walking distance from the beach. These beautiful views of the beach make my time at the university memorable.

What are your future plans?

I hope to become an NHS Public Health consultant who is actively involved in academia as well and eventually join the WHO or UN Women to help develop women-inclusive health policies.