Dr Dawn-Marie Walker is an Associate Professor at the University of Southampton, where her research examines how climate change and environmental extremes deepen health inequalities for the populations least able to protect themselves. She is also Associate Dean for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in the Faculty of Environmental and Life Sciences.
Her current programme sits at the intersection of climate, environment and health, with a focus on people who cannot regulate their own environments. She is Principal Investigator of PREPARE (Prison REsilience Planning And Response to Environmental Extremes for Health), an NIHR-funded study, and in partnership with the Ministry of Justice. Concurrently, as Work Package Lead on a £3.2 million NERC consortium, she investigates how temperature extremes affect the health of vulnerable groups, including older people, residents of deprived areas and those with long-term conditions. Her EPSRC-funded project Coastal Connections used systems approaches to show how failing infrastructure, transport poverty and constrained service access interact to widen health inequalities in coastal communities.
A mixed-methods health services researcher, she trained initially in psychology (BSc, University of Wales) and statistics (MSc, University of Bristol) before completing a PhD on cognitive function in early-onset psychosis at the University of Nottingham. She has published more than 70 peer-reviewed papers, including four Cochrane Reviews that have informed clinical guidelines and policy, and is the editor of the SAGE textbook An Introduction to Health Services Research: A Practical Guide.
She is recognised internationally for her work on patient and public involvement and co-production, ensuring that the communities most affected by health inequalities help shape research from the outset.
