Jane Chudleigh

After qualifying as a children's nurse, Jane started her clinical career in the neonatal intensive care unit and went on to study for her MSc in research methods and PhD in infection control in neonatal intensive care. She has continued her research interest in the field of infection control and is co-author of an international Cochrane review that evaluates interventions to improve hand hygiene compliance and reduce infection in patient care. The original review attracted over thirty media hits internationally in its first week of publication and its updated version continues to be widely cited; she continues to publish in this area. Following completion of her PhD, she worked in the Children’s Emergency Department which is where she specialised.

Jane undertook her post-doctoral fellowship at Great Ormond Street Hospital / UCL, Institute of Child Health exploring lung structure and function in infants diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis following newborn bloodspot screening (NBS) and continues to have a good relationship with the London Cystic Fibrosis Collaboration. It was this experience that helped develop Jane’s other research interest which focuses on communication with parents following NBS and has led to Jane being a Principal Investigator on an NIHR funded project and being invited to speak at events both nationally and internationally as well as being invited to join various national working groups. 

Jane has held numerous roles in HEIs including Module Lead, Cohort Lead, Programme Lead and more recently, Deputy Head of Department. In 2014, in recognition of her achievements in teaching and learning, she was made a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Jane's main research interest is newborn bloodspot screening (NBS). From 2017-2020 Jane was PI for an NIHR HS&DR funded study (ReSPoND) to develop co-desinged interventions for improving communication of positive NBS results to families. Following this, Jane successfully tendered and is PI/Co-PI for projects exploring stakeholder views of incorporating next generation sequencing into NBS for cystic fibrosis and an evaluation of the introduction of severe combined immunodeficiency into the NBS programme in England, respectively. 

Jane is currently working on funding applicaitons to continue the work developed during the ReSPoND study as well as other aspects of NBS.