LIIRH Affiliates

Ava Harding-Bell

Ava Harding-Bell is Chair of Swinsehead Medical Group’s Patient and Public Involvement Group and a member of NHS England’s Patient Participation Champions Group who help to shape patient services across England. She is also an active member of the Boston Primary Care Network Board in Lincolnshire. Ava has a background in diverse activist and advocacy roles, including serving as an elected councillor. She has substantial experience in community leadership, networking and relationship building, and multi-agency work, drawing on her own extensive lived experience of health and care in rural settings. Ava is a Community Researcher at the Lincoln International Institute for Rural Health. Since joining LIIRH she has served as a rapporteur, researcher, and advisor on a range of projects, including Macmillan-funded research into cancer survivorship and support services, a Cancer Research UK-funded study on Lung Cancer and a NIHR-funded project on developing a toolkit to inform best practice in health and care research in rural and coastal communities. For the latter this has involved engaging with Patient and Public Group members from across the county of Lincolnshire. Her interests include shaping and conducting research in ways that challenge rural and coastal health and care inequities, and the barriers communities experience when trying to engage with services. As a Community Researcher she is integral to the Institute’s commitment to community impact, translating research findings and creating outputs that are accessible and relevant to communities outside of research and academia.