Dr Jennie Hayes

Jennie is a Research Fellow with the National Institute for Health and Care Research South West Peninsula Applied Research Collaborative (PenARC). She is working on the CAN-DO study - exploring how community assets can help address health disparities; and the Mental Health Research Initiative, helping to tackle the gap between local needs and mental health research activity.. Jennie is a qualitative social psychologist with a background in group interaction, creative facilitation, diagnosis, health and wellbeing. Jennie’s PhD, part of the Wellcome Trust funded project ‘Exploring Diagnosis’, examined how clinicians make decisions about the diagnosis of autism spectrum conditions. 
Prior to her current post she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Exeter aiming to understand what works about a child protection pathway re-design in partnership with practitioners in children's social care. She has also been an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Relational Health Team at the University of Exeter and a Research Associate at the University of Bristol researching how clinicians manage antibiotic prescribing in out-of-hours practice (the OPEN project).

Jennie has a background in the arts, specialising in community and education based participatory arts practices. This involved working as a creative producer, fundraiser, evaluator, arts centre director and group facilitator within charitable arts organisations and as a freelance consultant. She has trained as a shared reading facilitator, in art therapy techniques and has developed projects in partnership with people with dementia and their carers, with mental health service users and with young people with challenging backgrounds. She has worked as a mental health support worker and voluntary bereavement counsellor.