Published: 05 June 2020
Professor Robert Peveler has been appointed Clinical Director for NHS Engagement at the NIHR Clinical Research Network (CRN) leading the work that supports health and care settings to promote and embed health and care research into their local organisations.
He has worked with the NIHR CRN for the last 10 years, most recently working as Clinical Director at CRN Wessex since 2014. He said:
“I’m delighted to take up this new position. In previous Network roles, the NHS Engagement work has been the element I have most enjoyed. Ensuring that research is seen as a priority within the NHS and other settings, and enabling as many participants as possible to take part in research is a key objective that we need to keep progressing to help meet the goals set out in the NHS 10 year plan.”
Prof Peveler is looking forward to building on the successful NHS Engagement work that is now starting to embed, such as further strategic work like that undertaken with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and work to encourage more clinicians to better understand the research agenda in the NHS. He said:
“There is still much work to do in encouraging and enabling research to take place in all settings including public health and in wider care settings. Research has never been more important to providing better treatment and care options and that gives us a great platform to explore the parameters of working in new areas.”
Prof Peveler trained in medicine and psychiatry in Oxford, where he held posts as a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow, and Clinical Lecturer in Psychiatry. After moving to Southampton in 1992, becoming a Professor in 1999, he was appointed Head of the Mental Health Clinical Group from 2000 to 2008, and Director of the Division of Clinical Neurosciences from 2008 to 2010. He was a Non-executive Director on the board of Hampshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust from 2005 to 2011.
His clinical and research interests are focused on the interface between psychiatry and medicine, with particular interests in depression, chronic pain and chronic fatigue, and the physical health of people with long-term mental illness. He has been an active advocate for the development of integrated services for people with physical and mental health problems for more than 30 years.