Dr Lucy Goddard

I am a midwife by background with experience working in large maternity hospitals before transitioning to academic research. I completed an MSc in Human Nutrition followed by a PhD in Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford in March 2024, funded by an NIHR ARC studentship. My doctoral research focused on supporting women with high blood pressure during pregnancy to engage in healthy behaviours. Using a person-based approach and a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, I developed and tested an app in collaboration with women and healthcare professionals. My research explored how the social and environmental context of women's lives during pregnancy intersects with the complexities of managing hypertensive pregnancy and how lifestyle support during antenatal care interacts within this framework.

Currently, I am a postdoctoral researcher in maternity and women's health in the hypertension team, predominantly focused on work around self-management of blood pressure during pregnancy and after birth. I am motivated by a strong commitment to improving women's experiences and outcomes across pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period and work across projects aiming to address this. I am the coordinating research midwife for the SNAP2 trial, which investigates the self-management of blood pressure following hypertensive pregnancy, and serve as the recruiting research midwife for the trial based at Oxford University Hospitals. I support trial management, coordinate with the participating maternity units, support participants through the trial and have worked on different workstreams, involving varied methods, in the SNAP2 programme. My work emphasizes equity in maternal health research, focusing on inclusive recruitment strategies, monitoring processes, and engaging within both hospital and community settings to understand how interventions can be embedded within existing NHS care pathways.

I supervise MSc student on Evidence-based Healthcare course and have taught on the MSc Translational Health Sciences and MSc in Applied Digital Health modules. I am always keen to engage with midwife researchers navigating academic and clinical career pathways.