Catherine J Bowen

Biography

Catherine is Professor in Podiatry at the University of Southampton and Head of the School of Health Sciences Active Living Research Group. She is an NIHR Senior Investigator and Deputy Director and Academic Career Development Lead of the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Wessex.

Catherine qualified as a podiatrist in 1987, then working within the UK NHS as a podiatrist specialising in rheumatology before entering academia in 1996. Since that time she has made a significant contribution to the development of research in the podiatry and wider allied health professions. In recognition of this, in 2014, Catherine received a meritorious award from the UK Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists and in 2015, was awarded a prestigious National Institute for Health Research Fellowship.

From her PhD thesis, Catherine’s research, as the first podiatrist to form a multi-professional research programme focussed on developing diagnostic ultrasound imaging techniques for the foot and ankle, has been adopted at scale. The work has been fundamental to the introduction and implementation of diagnostic ultrasound imaging within clinical practice as a diagnostic aid to improve foot health management for individuals who have arthritis. Specifically, the use of ultrasound imaging by allied health professionals at the point of care to examine musculoskeletal status facilitates efficiencies in clinical decision-making and improvement in patient outcomes and care.

Catherine is currently leading research focused on providing the evidence about new ways of delivering treatments for active living and developing service pathways that enable under-represented people to access treatment at the right time. A key aspect for Catherine is that her research has always been deeply rooted in need to support NHS decision makers make informed choices about how to best deploy resources. Through the OptiFooT programme of work Catherine demonstrated that for people who have osteoarthritis and foot/ankle pain are often overlooked. To that end, as founding Chair, Catherine establsihed the International Foot and Ankle Osteoarthritis Consortium (IFOAC) to drive foot-ankle osteoarthritis (OA) research forward. IFOAC is hosted by the Centre for Sport, Exercise and Osteoarthritis Research Versus Arthritis and endorsed by OARSI (Osteoarthritis Research Society International).

Catherine has a number of national and international positions of authority in leading roles that have been recognised through major honours and distinctions with prestigious scholarly societies. Including two invited international appointments: Adjunct Professor, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand and Adjunct Professor, Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Emeritus Editor in Chief (Editor: 2018 - 2023), the Journal of Foot and Ankle Research. Fellowship of the Faculty of Podiatric Medicine, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons (Glasg), Fellowship of the Royal College of Podiatry, Chartered Scientist with the Science Council.

Catherine is committed to research capacity building and researcher inclusion and has a strong track record in capacity building and training researchers, especially in under-represented professions. With particular emphasis on developing innovative opportunities across the wider allied health, social care and nursing agenda, under Catherine’s leadership the work has been transformational and provided a step change in the uptake of funded PhDs and research.