Prof Sandra Eldridge

Sandra Eldridge is Professor of Biostatistics and Associate Dean for Strategic Developments at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Sandra has a degree in mathematics and spent time teaching mathematics in schools in Nigeria and the UK, conducting demographic research, and teaching undergraduate statistics, before leaving work to spend time with her young children in the late 1980s. She joined Barts and The London as a medical statistician in 1994, and almost immediately began working in primary care, moving to be part of the then Department of General Practice and Primary Care in 1996. Primary care has been the focus of her work since and she was joint lead of the Centre for Primary Care and Public Health between 2007 and 2017, and a member of SAPC Exec between 2012 and 2017.

Sandra’s major research interests are in cluster randomised trials and complex interventions, she completed a doctorate focused on cluster randomised trials in primary care (rather late in her career) in 2005, and has a portfolio of highly cited methodological papers in this area. Her collaborative research is wide-ranging and she has an extensive portfolio of National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) funded research. She sits on several NIHR funding panels, directs the UK Clinical Research Collaboration registered and NIHR funded Pragmatic Clinical Trials Unit, and is joint lead of the east London arm of Research Design Service London. She currently leads an international collaborative group working on pilot and feasibility studies. Publications from this group include the 2016 CONSORT extension for pilot trials. She also leads a sub-group of the initiative to extend the Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool to non-randomised studies and trials with non-standard design.

Sandra has always been concerned to support those trying to maintain a balance between their core discipline and working in primary care. In 2002, she was instrumental in setting up the Primary Health Care Study Group of the Royal Statistical Society, a group that aimed to bring statisticians working in primary care together for mutual encouragement, support and collaboration.  In 2012 she set up the SAPC mentorship scheme and the Primary Health Care Scientists (PhoCuS) group within SAPC together with Professor Christine Bond from Aberdeen. PHoCuS is designed to support and encourage non-medical members of SAPC in their careers.