Dr Claire Griffiths

Claire's Leeds Beckett journey started over 20 years ago as an undergraduate student, and she is delighted to be taking on the role as Co-Director of the Obesity Institute, to drive forward the ambitious mission; to improve the lives of people living with obesity.

Claire’s interests are driven by the question; How do we implement and evaluate a systems approach to address population obesity, in real world settings; creating systemic, transformational, long-term systems change, that is feasible and affordable.

More specifically she wants to understand how we shift from the theoretical application of a complex systems approach to real world implementation, application, and evaluation. We can only achieve this by strengthening interdisciplinary research, breaking discipline silos and identifying creative ways to broaden inclusion and strengthen engagement and partnerships with all stakeholders, including people with lived experience of obesity, communities, practitioners, and policymakers.

Our transdisciplinary framework for action demonstrates the value of blending multiple methods form the systems toolkit (rather than driving the action with a single tool as the lens) and it is the synergy of the different methods to truly capture the complexity that makes our framework innovative and ambitious. The framework complements and extends existing international best practise by extending methodologies in the design, implementation, and evaluation of obesity actions. Perhaps most importantly, this is the first framework to be coproduced by a transdisciplinary team with a holistic understanding of the wide range of obesity determinants, and the skills and approaches necessary to address them. It represents the much-needed shift to practice-based evidence to guide population health action and policy development. Where the real, complicated world is not controlled, but instead it is documented and measured, just as it occurs. It is this process of measurement and addressing what matters, not controlling how practice is delivered that is important.

Claire’s ambition is to provide stakeholders with the foundation to implement a systems approach to obesity, providing practice-based evidence to address real-world challenges of obesity and drive positive system change.

Claire contributes to a range of modules across the Carnegie School of Sport including obesity management, active lifestyles and multidisciplinary modules that are delivered across the Faculty.

Claire also teaches research methods at both undergraduate and master’s level of study. In addition she supervises a number of undergraduate and postgraduate research projects.