Dr Yu Fu PhD, MPH, BMed

Research Overview

am an NIHR Advanced Fellow & Tenure Track Fellow in the Department of Primary Care and Mental Health, University of Liverpool. I am an experienced mixed methods health services researcher with clinical and academic backgrounds in medicine, public health and applied health research.

My research interests can be described under two themes:
1) Mental health inequalities - optimising the management of physical health in people with mental health conditions, specifically for underserved populations.
2) Women' health - development and evaluation of interventions to improve psychosocial factors and outcomes in long-term conditions.

To-date I have been awarded £1.56 million in research funding. Recently, my research has been funded by the NIHR Three Research School Mental Health Programme, which examines the impact of changes to mental health services post pandemic on ethnic minority populations to inform culturally appropriate mental health services. I am also PI/Co-investigator on several evaluations with routine data and stakeholder interviews to establish evidence for improved health services, including: digital intervention to reduce opioid prescribing in primary care funded by NHS Insights Prioritisation Programme, characteristics of people excluded from mental health services funded by the NIHR, lipids management in deprived communities funded by NIHR ARC/AHSN, mental health impact of transitioning to clinical practice during the pandemic for newly qualified clinical workforce funded by GMC and NIHR ARC, clinical outcomes of stroke patients with ethnic minority backgrounds funded by NIHR ARC and informing partnership for North East palliative and end of life care. I am also part of the NIHR Mental Health Research Incubator, collaborating with peers and clinicians in this area.

I recently joined NIHR’s new Mental Health Research for Innovation Centre (M-RIC) - one of the UK’s largest mental health research capacity-building and transformation programmes, £10.5m funded by the Office for Life Sciences and the NIHR as part of the Government’s Mental Health Mission.

Research Grants
1. Establishing evidence to inform culturally competent mental health services (EVOLVE) (Principal investigator, £172,082.00, NIHR Three School Mental Health Research Programme)
2. Understanding the mental health impact of transitioning to clinical practice during the COVID-19 pandemic for newly qualified doctors, nurses and paramedics (Principal investigator, £11,891.00, NIHR ARC North East and North Cumbria)
3. Assessing the Clinical Outcomes of Stroke Patients from Black or Asian Ethnicities Across the North East (Principal investigator, £6,000.00, NIHR ARC North East and North Cumbria)
4. Evaluating the impact of an evidence-informed, digitally deployed, GP remote consultation video intervention that aims to reduce opioid prescribing in primary care (Co-investigator, £280,388.00, NIHR/AAC NHS Insights Prioritisation Programme)
5. Excluded from Mental Health Services: Characteristics and Barriers (Co-investigator, £147,175.00, NIHR Three School Mental Health Research Programme)
6. North East Palliative and End of Life Care Collaborative (Co-investigator, £99,256.47, NIHR HSDR)
7. Meeting Social Welfare Legal Needs in End of Life Care: Co-creation of a System-wide Research Partnership (Co-investigator, £74,180.97, NIHR HSDR)
8. Shared medical appointments (SMA) in primary care for improving self-management of COPD amongst underserved groups: feasibility randomised control trial in North East and North Cumbria (Co-investigator, £275,123.00, NIHR RfPB)
9. Exploring the effect of COVID-19 on women’s experiences of pregnancy, birth and postpartum in Indonesia (Co-investigator, £26,298.34, GCRF funding)
10. Developing core outcome sets for women with urinary incontinence (Principal investigator, £4,623.00, University of Leeds Pump Priming Funds)
11. Leeds Older women Urinary Incontinence and Self-management (LOUISA) (Co-investigator, £463,051.00, Leeds Benevolent Society for Single Ladies Charity)