Clinical Management of Childhood Obesity and Related Co-morbidities

Professor Julian Hamilton-Shield is a Professor in Diabetes and Metabolic Endocrinology. His main research interests encompass neonatal glucose metabolism, childhood obesity and its treatment, diabetes mellitus and the development of insulin resistance through childhood.

Sally Abbott works both as an academic and as a clinical dietitian, specialising in obesity management. Sally is the Clinical Lead Dietitian for Tier 3 & Tier 4 services at University Hospitals Coventry & Warwickshire NHS Trust and Assistant Professor in Dietetics at Coventry University. She was the European winner of the IFSO (International Federation for the Surgery of Obesity) Integrated Health Scholarship in 2018 for her commitment to bariatric surgery dietetics and sits on national committees, including on the British Obesity and Metabolic Surgery Society (BOMSS) council and acting Bariatric Officer for the British Dietetic Association (BDA) Obesity Specialist Group. She is an EASO (European Association for Study of Obesity) National Clinical Fellow in recognition of her clinical expertise in the field.

Dr Catherine Homer is an Associate Professor of Obesity and Public Health in the Physical Activity, Wellness and Public Health research group based in the School of Sport and Physical Activity, Sheffield Hallam University. Catherine is the Healthy and Active 100 research theme lead in the Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre (AWRC), Deputy Editor of the Journal Perspectives in Public Health and the Yorkshire and Humber and the Public Health Specialist Research Lead for the NIHR Research Delivery Network.  Catherine an expert in public health and obesity with 20+ years' research and practice experience as a Public Health Specialist in a NHS Trust and Local Authority. Catherine has over 60 peer-reviewed articles and conference proceedings on qualitative health evaluations of paediatric/adolescent obesity, experiences of bariatric surgery, and fuel poverty health risks (old and cold) and on research grants worth over £7.4m as PI/Co-I. Catherine has strong collaborations with external partners and academic institutions and is currently PI on a £1.5m NIHR HS&DR funded (2024-26) project 'ENHANCE - Evaluating the NHS England12 Complications of Excess weight clinics for children and young people' led by academics from five universities and two hospital trusts. Catherine is also Co-I on a £5m NIHR PHR project Doncaster Health Determinants Research Collaboration (2022-2027).

Louisa Ells is Professor of Obesity, and Co-Director of the Obesity Institute at Leeds Beckett University. She is a registered public health nutritionist and Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health, with a specialist interest in multi-disciplinary, cross-sector applied obesity research that is founded in the voice of lived experience. Her research focuses on obesity related public health, service evaluation, inequalities, and disordered eating, delivered using systematic reviewing, mixed method, coproduction and person-centred approaches. She is a passionate advocate of the patient voice and cofounded the Obesity Voices Hub, which is a dedicated public and patient involvement and engagement hub to raise the voice of lived experience in obesity policy, practice and research. She has worked on grants with a total income exceeding £11 million (over £4million as principal investigator), and has published over 115 peer reviewed manuscripts and 12 government reports. She is currently joint principal investigator of the ENHANCE study.

Dr Evelien Gevers studied Medicine at Leiden University in Leiden, The Netherlands. She developed her interest in Paediatric Endocrinology as an undergraduate, and studied the effect of GnRH analogue treatment in girls with precocious puberty in the Paediatric Endocrine department in Leiden University Medical Centre. After graduating, she worked for a few months as a clinical scientist in the Dutch Working Group for Growth Hormone, with Prof Jan Maarten Wit. She then won a 2 year grant from the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences to study growth hormone (GH) secretion, GH binding protein and GH receptors and their regulation by sex steroids in the rat, in The National Institute for Medical Research in Mill Hill, with Prof Iain Robinson. After return to The Netherlands, she continued her PhD project with Jan Maarten Wit in Leiden University, further focusing on the growth plate and growth, extending her work to estrogen receptors, PTH receptors and PTHrP in the growth plate. She then started her Paediatric training in the Erasmus Medical Centre – Sophia Children’s Hospital in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. She interrupted her clinical training to return to Iain Robinson’s group in The National Institute for Medical Research in 1999, as a postdoctoral scientist and worked on the GH deficient dwarf rat, GH and bone marrow adipocytes, and GH signalling through Stat5b in the growth plate. She then also joined the Department of Endocrinology at Great Ormond Street Hospital as an honorary clinical fellow with Prof Mehul Dattani. From 2007, she continued her Paediatric training in London Hospitals, and Paediatric Endocrine training in Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. In 2012, she worked at the Erasmus Medical Centre – Sophia Children’s Hospital and the diabetes centre ‘Diabeter’ to complete her training for dual Dutch and UK registration and continued there in her first Consultant post. In 2013, she was appointed as a Consultant Paediatric Endocrinologist in Barts Health – Royal London Children’s Hospital with an academic component at the Centre for Endocrinology at WHRI.

She has been awarded Young Investigator Awards from the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology, the Dutch Society for Paediatrics and the GH and IGF1 Research Society. 

She is a member and Vice-Chair of the Science Committee of the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology, a member of the National Paediatric Diabetes Audit Data Working Group, and the National Working Group for Type 2 Diabetes in Children and the British Paediatric and Adolescent Bone Group.

She is PI for many commercial and non-commercial NIHR studies at Royal London Children’s Hospital and is the National Coordinating Investigator for studies in Prader Willi Syndrome (Destiny, Soleno) and Type 2 Diabetes (Vertis, Merck). She is part of the Oversight Committee for the Interleukin-2 Therapy of Autoimmunity in Diabetes Study.

Dr. Skae is a Consultant Paediatric Endocrinologist at the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital (RMCH) and is lead clinician for the Childhood Obesity, Type 2 Diabetes and Differences of Sex Development (DSD) Disorders. She also has research interests in skeletal dysplasias in addition to obesity.

Dr. Skae was awarded a Churchill Fellowship for work in Childhood obesity in 2019 and is currently the Deputy Medical Director at RMCH.

Kat joined the paediatric respiratory team at Kings College London Hospital after completing her respiratory grid training in London. She has completed fellowships in paediatric sleep in Melbourne and paediatric respiratory medicine at BC Childrens in Vancouver. She completed her MD (Res) with department of gene therapy at Imperial College London running the paediatric arm of the multidose gene therapy trial in CF and exploring the relationship between inflammation and airway disease in chronic suppurative lung disease.