Email: fiona.matthews@ncl.ac.uk

Research profile and key clinical specialties

I am a Professor of Epidemiology in the Population Health Sciences Institute, Newcastle University.

My research group has a programme of applied and methodological research into population challenges in ageing.

We are particularly interested in inequalities in ageing; understanding health ageing and the impact of policy changes on living well in old age.

The group contains a range of data scientists and applied researchers, including those who link population health with biology, particularly around brain health.

Two key publications

• Kingston A, Wohland P, Wittenberg R, Robinson L, Brayne C, Matthews FE, Jagger C; Cognitive Function and Ageing Studies collaboration. (2017) Is late-life dependency increasing or not? A comparison of the Cognitive Function and Ageing Studies (CFAS). Lancet. 390(10103):1676-1684 doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(17)31575-1
• Matthews FE, Stephan B, Robinson L, Jagger C, Barnes L, Arthur A, Brayne C, CFAS. (2016) Two decade comparison reveals decline in incidence of dementia in England. Nature Communications. Nat Commun. 19;7:11398. doi: 10.1038/ncomms11398

Possible PhD projects

• Understanding health life expectancy for older populations and the impact of recent change in population structure (impact of COVID-19).
• Are measures of disability in electronic health records sufficient to understand health in the older population?

More information

I have a large group of data scientists, epidemiologists and statisticians and a diverse cohort of PhD students from clinical, biological and mathematical backgrounds.

Keywords: Epidemiology, population, inequalities, ageing, brain, cognitive, dementia, statistician, Fiona, Matthews, Newcastle

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