Rachel Denholm is an Epidemiologist and Health Service Researcher, and joined the Centre for Academic Primary Care, part of Population Health Sciences at Bristol Medical School, in 2016.

Rachel obtained her PhD from the Institute of Child Health, University College London, and went on to work at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, and the Department of Non Communicable Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, before coming to Bristol.

In addition to her position at the University of Bristol, Rachel has an honorary position with Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire (BNSSG) Clinical Commissioning Group, following a year as a Researcher-in-Residence within the organisation.  Rachel is also co-lead of the Sustainability and Transformation Partnership (STP) Population Health Management (PHM) Intelligence subgroup which provides strategic direction and support for the design and delivery of an effective PHM analytical capability across the BNSSG region (see here for project details).

Rachel has worked on a range of projects broadly covering the areas of early life determinants of health (life course epidemiology), cancer aetiology focusing on environmental exposures, multimorbidity, medicines optimisation and primary care. Rachel has a particular interest in the use of routine administrative health and social care data for research and informing direct care, and is part of the Executive and Operational group for the HDRUK South West Better Care Partnership.   Her current research interests include the use of local (BNSSG System Wide Dataset) and national (CPRD, HES, BSA, GPES) administrative data to investigate the aetiology, management and delivery of care to patients with multiple chronic health conditions.