Bio
Meredith Leston is an accomplished public health consultant and researcher who is passionate about using her skillset to address modern health challenges and to improve public services and patient outcomes in the UK and abroad. She has established a strong track record for bringing scientific and technical insight into real-world health and social care problems at the national and international level. With past experience pursuing positive outcomes in these areas across commercial, clinical, academic and philanthropic settings, she is a passionate believer in the value of cross-sector collaboration and interdisciplinary approaches when tackling intractable social and medical issues. She is currently pursuing her doctorate in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford.
Research interests
Meredith's research is focused upon developing a real-time vaccine benefit risk platform capable of monitoring and differentiating seasonal vaccine effectiveness, uptake and adverse effects amongst immunocompromised patient groups - the first of its kind. Her research utilises a combination of routinely collected primary care medical record data (courtesy of the Oxford-Royal College of General Practitioners' Research and Surveillance Centre) and biological specimen data (virology and serology) and aims to inform vaccine scheduling and dosing amongst this vulnerable group. By leveraging the technological capabilities of her commercial partner, EMIS Health, and the expertise of the Turing Fellowship, Meredith intends to unpick which immunocompromised sub-categories, patient demographics and concurrent medications are most susceptible to vaccine failure or accelerated waning and will establish a mechanism for immunocompromised patients to report adverse events of interest immediately post-vaccination. This work is especially important considering that immunocompromised patients are rarely eligible for the large-scale clinical trials that validate the safety of vaccine candidates. It is her hope that, by presenting immunocompromised patients with more personalised information about vaccine benefit-risk in this way, she might contribute to efforts to reduce vaccine hesitancy and advance precision medicine.