Regional Vice President Spotlight - Europe
Nicola Gray is starting her second term as the International Association for Adolescent Health’s regional vice-president for Europe. Registered as a pharmacist in 1991, she has worked in hospital, community, and academic pharmacy and currently is a Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy Practice at the University of Huddersfield in the UK.
In 1999, as part of a team who created the first no-charge, pharmacy-based emergency contraceptive service in England, Gray was awarded a UK Pharmaceutical Care Award. She was also a recipient of the prestigious Harkness Fellowship in International Health Care Policy (2001-2002, USA), where she studied adolescents’ use of the internet for health and medicines information. In 2003, following the completion of her fellowship, she started her academic career at the University of Nottingham, and continued at the University of Central Lancashire before starting her own consultancy company doing research and evaluation for clients including Health Education England (reviews about pre-registration pharmacist placements in general practice, and mental health pharmacy practice training) and the charity Young Minds (designing the ‘Headmeds’ website where young people can find information about commonly-used mental health medicines). She returned to academic practice at the University of Huddersfield in 2021.
Gray obtained her Fellowship of the US-based Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine (SAHM) in 2010 and was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in 2018 for distinction in the profession of pharmacy. She is a Trustee of the UK Association for Young People’s Health and is also a Governing Council Member of the global coalition NCD Child, chairing their Task Force on Essential Medicines and Equipment. She represents NCD Child on the UK Working Group on NCDs where she provides a specific child and youth perspective for a lifecourse approach to the prevention and management of long-term conditions.
Her research interests include:
- Young people’s health and wellbeing, and their use of medicines
- Prevention and management of non-communicable diseases / long-term conditions
- Health in schools, including the use of medicines and intersectoral working
- Health and medicines literacy
- The role of pharmacists in improving health and wellbeing
Gray is an Affiliated Researcher within the UNESCO Chair and WHO Collaborating Centre for Global Health and Education, based at the Université Clermont Auvergne in France, and has published a number of papers and opinion pieces regarding the safe reopening of schools during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the challenges for children and young people living with chronic illness. She is a member of the UNESCO Technical Advisory Group for the forthcoming Global Status Report on School Health and Nutrition.
She is currently organising the 22nd IAAH European Regional Conference in Athens, which will take place from 5-7 October 2022, and hopes to see many colleagues there in person, from Europe and beyond. The call for abstracts will be circulated soon. Please watch the conference website for more information https://www.iaah-athens2022.gr/
About the Author
Nicola Gray, PhD, FRPharmS, FSAHM, is a Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy Practice at the University of Huddersfield, UK. She is chair of the IAAH Policy and Governance Committee and is a member of the IAAH Communications Committee.
Jenna Baumgartner, MS, is the IAAH Executive Administrator and is a member of the IAAH Communications Committee.