Dr Katalin Ujhelyi Gomez PhD

Research Overview

Multimorbidity

In my role, I investigated the multimorbidity of mental health problems and alcohol attributable physical health conditions to understand the longer term consequences of co-occurring alcohol and mental illness. This was a collaborative project led by the University of Liverpool working in partnership with King’s College London, the University of Sheffield, and Columbia University, working towards developing a larger research collaborative. This work was conducted within the scope of a consolidator award granted by the Medical Research Council (UKRI/MRC) with the aim to develop a competitive research bid proposing a 3-year project in response to the MRC's 2019 Strategic Priorities Fund Call, ‘Tackling multimorbidity at scale: Understanding disease clusters, determinants & biological pathways’. The work involved the building of a research collaborative and the analyses of the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey dataset. In addition to cooperating with other academics, the partnership working had a strong Patient and Public Involvement element working with policy representatives, general practitioners, and public advisors (people with lived experience). We used latent class analysis to investigate clusters/multimorbidity of physical health conditions. As part of this work we looked at whether these clusters of multimorbidity differ depending on an individual’s mental health and alcohol use. Our work calls attention to the need to ensure that alcohol and mental health services are better integrated. Future work will aim at developing web-tools that can be used by GPs to understand which patients are likely to have the poorest outcomes and in selecting the best treatment options for their patients. Our work can also help inform the development of government policies and in selecting which treatments and services to provide, to avoid individuals with mental health problems experiencing more harms as a result of their drinking.

Maternal drinking

I've worked on an inter-disciplinary research project examining maternal alcohol use and mental health funded by the Liverpool Clinical Commissioning group (LCCG). Maternal alcohol use can result in significant and unique harms both for the mother and the child. Our study involved three components. Within the scope of a qualitative approach, I recruited pregnant women, mothers, and healthcare professionals to conduct interviews and focus groups around their views and experiences of alcohol consumption and used thematic analysis to analyse the acquired data. An online survey focusing on maternal health and behaviour provided quantitative data on the alcohol use of women. I also performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to investigate the effectiveness of alcohol interventions from pregnancy through to motherhood. Our research suggests that both pregnant women and mothers drink to cope with stress, and that they may be motivated to reduce drinking through a unique desire to care for their child. Therefore, this time period of a woman's life can provide an important opportunity to influence alcohol consumption and support women to drink in line with relevant government guidance. This project has generated background research for a grant application to design and test an alcohol reduction intervention mobile app targeting both pregnancy and motherhood.


COVID-19
Previously, I was involved in the exploration of the psychological and social effects of COVID-19. The research was funded by the COVID-19 Strategic Research Fund to conduct a community-based Liverpool household COVID-19 Cohort Study (COVID-LIV): https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/infection-and-global-health/research/covid-19-studies/. This study explored the mechanisms that may underpin psychological resilience to the pandemic as well as the psychosocial impact of it in the Liverpool City Region. Focusing on the wider determinants of health (psychological, social, community and societal), it examined such factors at the individual and household levels.
I have also conducted research around building resilience with reference to COVID-19 geographies to provide recommendations on strengthening resilience in British Cities for future pandemics (Policy briefing, Heseltine Institute).


Obesity
I have worked with the University's Appetite and Obesity Research Group to review qualitative data from existing research (meta-synthesis of primary school stakeholder conversations about child weight) using an inductive thematic analysis approach to synthesise data.