Dr Shoba Poduval, BMBS, MRCGP, MPH, PhD

I am a GP in Islington and Haringey and Senior Clinical Lecturer in Primary Care. I am the Programme Lead for the Academic GP Advanced Fellowship, an innovative new collaboration between Barts Life Sciences (QMUL, Barts Health), NEL ICB and east London Primary Care to provide a 5-year programme for GPs to build academic primary care capacity in the local area.

I studied medicine at the University of Nottingham before completing my junior doctor and GP training in Essex and east London. After qualifying as a GP in 2011, I studied for a Masters in Public Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, where my dissertation was a qualitative study of undocument migrant access to primary care. After publishing my findings I was awarded a Young Researcher Award at the Conference of the World Organization of Family Doctors (WONCA) in Taiwan. In 2014 I was awarded a NIHR School for Primary Care GP Career Progression Fellowship to join the UCL eHealth Unit to work with the ‘Healthy Living for people with type 2 diabetes’ (HeLP-Diabetes) team on the development and evaluation of an online type 2 diabetes self-management education programme. This led to my PhD research in 2016-19 using mixed methods and an interdisciplinary approach from health services research and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to evaluate the structured pathway of the online education programme during implementation in north London GP Practices. I was awarded a NIHR poster prize and I was a UCL ‘3 minute thesis’ competition winner in recognition of my skills in presenting my findings to lay audiences.  

In 2019 I was awarded a NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer (ACL) Fellowship due to my outstanding potential as a leader in primary care research. During my ACL I was awarded funding by the NIHR SPCR to lead research studies exploring covid vaccine hesitancy in ethnic minority communities, the experience of gestational diabetes in women from diverse backgrounds, and community-based support for people from disadvantaged backgrounds experiencing digital exclusion (less access, skills or motivation to use digital health services). 

I also have experience and expertise in policy engagement. In 2023 I was a Researcher-In-Residence for the Office for Health Improvement & Disparities, London region. OHID is part of the Department of Health & Social Care and focuses on driving innovation in health improvement, prevention of poor health, and tackling health disparities. I undertook research to support the development of a strategic framework to address ethnic inequalities in London healthcare, through an anti-racist approach. This involved a systematic review identifying and synthesizing the evidence on anti-racist interventions in healthcare, and the development of a theory of change model to accompany the strategic framework. 

I also have an interest in health data science and public engagement with research using healthcare record data. In 2024-25 I undertook a NIHR Development & Skills Enhancement Award (DSEA) to learn about the role of electronic healthcare record data and data linkage in exploring inequalities in long-term conditions management and outcomes in diverse groups.