MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit

Amrit Kaur Purba graduated with a First-Class BA Honours Degree in Nursing Studies in 2016. Subsequently, she completed a Master’s in Public Health (with Merit) at the University of Glasgow alongside her role as a community public health nurse in 2017. Throughout her clinical career Amrit has maintained an active interest in research, with a focus on organisational psychology and psychological wellbeing. This includes her MPH thesis: a systematic review which sought to investigate the relationship between organisational stressors and mental wellbeing within police officers. Amrit presented the review at the International Law Enforcement and Public Health Conference in Toronto in 2018, having received educational grants from both Public Health England (PHE) and the Royal College of Nursing Foundation. For this research, she received the Royal College of Nursing Foundation Trevor Clay Award for outstanding achievement in professional development.

Amrit worked for Public Health England (PHE) as a Health Protection Nurse in London and later as Lead Research Nurse for a joint collaborative study between PHE and Imperial College University, investigating pathogen factors which influence the transmission of Scarlet Fever in school and nursery settings to reduce Invasive Group A Streptococcus infection.

Following this, she joined the MRC/CSO Social Public Health Sciences Unit in 2019 to undertake a 3-year PhD investigating the relationship between social media use and adolescent engagement in health risk behaviours, using data from the UK-wide Millennium Cohort Study. She is based within the Inequalities programme, and is supervised by Professor Vittal Katikireddi, Dr Anna Pearce and Professor Marion Henderson. Amrit's PhD is funded by the Medical Research Council and is grateful for their support of her research.

Amrit returned to practice in 2020 for a short period, as Senior Health Protection Lead for the Public Health approach to Public Health Scotland's COVID-19 Contact Tracing Programme, to assist with both its design and development.

Vittal Katikireddi
Anna Pearce
Marion Henderson

Herdman, T., Cordery, R., Karo, B., Purba, A. K., Begum, L., Lamagni, T., Kee, C., Balasegaram, S. and Sriskandan, S. (2021) Clinical management and impact of scarlet fever in the modern era: findings from a cross-sectional study of cases in London, 2018-2019. BMJ Open, (Accepted for Publication)

Tweed, E. et al. (2021) The health of people experiencing co-occurring homelessness, imprisonment, substance use, sex work, and/or severe mental illness in high-income countries: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, (doi: 10.1136/jech-2020-215975) (PMID:33893182) (Early Online Publication)

Purba, Amrit, and Evangelia Demou. "The relationship between organisational stressors and mental wellbeing within police officers: a systematic review." BMC public health 19.1 (2019): 1286. 

‘Enhance the NHS nursing workforce’s contribution to tackle Covid-19’, Opinion piece published in Nursing Times.

How should the role of the nurse change in response to Covid-19?', Discussion piece published in Nursing Times.

Does social media influence adolescent engagement in health risk behaviours?  A protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis [PDF]. Amrit K Purba, Paul M Henery, Rachel M Thomson, Anna Pearce, Marion Henderson, S Vittal Katikireddi, April 2020.

Cordery, R., Purba, A., Begum, L., Mills, E., Mosavie, M., Vieira, A., ... & Sriskandan, S. (2022) Frequency of Transmission, asymptomatic shedding, and airborne spread of Streptococcus pyogenes among school children exposed to scarlet fever: a longitudinal multi-cohort molecular epidemiology contact tracing study. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2666-5247(21)00332-3 

Social media use in young people: what are the consequences for health and health inequalities?
Medical Research Council
2019-2022