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Sheila Greenfield qualified with a BSc (Hons) in French and Sociology from the University of Aston in 1978. She went on to study for an MA (Birmingham) and PhD (Aston) in comparative sociology before joining the Department of General Practice at the University 麻豆精选 in 1983. Sheila has continued to work in Birmingham leading and teaching medical sociology within the MBChB programme of the College of Medicine and Health and qualitative methods education and applied research within the Department of Applied Health Sciences.

Sheila has published extensively in her area of particular interest, patient self-management, with a particular focus on the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) by patients with chronic conditions as part of their self-management. She has been an invited speaker on CAM at both national (Foundation for Integrated Medicine, Blackie Foundation, Research Council for Complementary Medicine) and local level (Birmingham Science Museum’s Birmingham Cafe Scientifique) and reviews articles on CAM for a wide range of journals.

Teaching Programmes

• MBChB 5 year programme

Sheila is interested in supervising doctoral research students in the following areas:

• Lay health beliefs
• Complementary and alternative medicine
• Beliefs and behaviours related to medicine taking
• Research using qualitative methodology

If you are interesting in studying any of these subject areas please contact Sheila on the contact details above.

Research themes

Lay health beliefs; the use of self-management for prevention, health maintenance and the management of chronic disease; complementary and alternative medicine, medicine taking; qualitative methodology.

Mixed methods research on chronic disease

Sheila currently leads the qualitative component of large mixed methods studies focussing on hypertension, diabetes, vasculitis and atrial fibrillation.

Lay health beliefs and behaviours

Sheila's work has focussed on lay understanding of symptoms and the methods people use to self-manage their health. Areas studied have included use of complementary and alternative medicine, in particular homeopathy, hypnosis and herbal medicine, home self-testing kits, attitudes to prescribed and over-the-counter medicines and how people integrate orthodox treatment and self-care.

Current studies 

• Optimising the monitoring and management of raised blood pressure during and after pregnancy (NIHR)
• Improving medication adherence: a qualitative study of the effect of using urine assays on consultations about antihypertensive medications (RfPB)
• NIHR Global Health Research Group on Atrial Fibrillation (NIHR)
• 'Snacktivity' to promote physical activity and reduce future risk of disease in the population (NIHR)
• Yoga programme for type-2 diabetes prevention (YOGA-DP) among high-risk people in India: intervention development and feasibility study (MRC NIHR DfID Wellcome Trust Global Health Trials)