Staff Profile

Laura is a Cancer Epidemiologist with a particular interest in social inequalities in cancer outcomes, particularly in relation to early diagnostic activity including screening. Laura completed her undergraduate degree in Human Sciences at Oxford University in 1999 after which she moved to the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine to undertake an MSc in Medical Demography (2001) followed by a PhD in Epidemiology ("International differences in breast cancer survival and 'cure' by social deprivation: a comparative study of England and Australia", 2006).

Following her doctorate Laura held a Non-Clinical CRUK Postdoctoral Fellowship at LSHTM during which she held other competitively-won funding enabling her to lead research into differentials in cancer outcomes over a period of 15 years. In March 2022 Laura moved to Newcastle University's Population Health Sciences Institute to take up a the role of Senior Lecturer in Public Health.

Laura's research to date has focussed on inequalities in cancer survival in the UK, specifically examining patterns and trends by deprivation for all cancers as well as the role of screening and pre-diagnostic covariables in explaining socio-economic and ethnic differences in breast cancer survival. Laura has been Co-PI on an ESRC-funded study examining the specific influence of the socio-economic environment, independently of the a patient's individual deprivation status, upon survival for 6 common cancers in England. She is also developing a greater interest in modes of early cancer detection, and is currently PI on a Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund grant examining the potential of using a machine learning algorithm on primary care records to identify patients at higher risk or developing pancreatic cancer. Since arriving at Newcastle she has won funding to develop a Screening Engagement Index for England (from Cancer Research UK) which will enable a more in-depth analysis of localities which have very low proportions of persons participating in the three national screening programmes, as well as funding from Oracle Cancer Trust & North West Cancer Research to examine patterns and trends in head and neck cancer (HNC), and further funds from Cancer Research UK to examine differentials in adherence to endocrine therapy amongst women with breast cancer. Her other involvements include being Co-I on CANDETECT (www.candetect.org) and the Patient Safety Research Collaboration (Disadvantaged Communities Theme).

Laura has over twenty years' experience teaching Epidemiology, both face-to-face and online, as well as courses on Statistical Methods; Research, Design and Analysis; and Demographic Methods. For a period of over ten years she lectured on an intensive Short Course "Cancer Survival: Principles, Methods and Applications" which included a wide range of participants including those engaged in CPD. In Newcastle Laura co-leads the Module "Social Determinants of Health - Theories and Applications", but also contributes to "Fundamentals of Research" as well as "Public Policy, Health and Health Inequalities". Laura regularly supervises student projects including those completing Master's level awards in Public Health, Pharmacy and Batchelor's awards in Biomedical Science. Laura has supervised three PhD students to completion who have collectively examined issues surrounding different types of survival analyses, net survival patterns and trends, survival according to breast cancer treatment and the use of cancer survival data in policy settings. Laura is always interested to receive contact from prospective research degree candidates.

• Articles

  • Ingleby FC, Woods LM, Atherton IM, Baker M, Elliss-Brookes L, Belot A. An investigation of cancer survival inequalities associated with individual-level socio-economic status, area-level deprivation, and contextual effects, in a cancer patient cohort in England and Wales. BMC Public Health 2022, 22(1), 90.
  • Ingleby FC, Woods LM, Atherton IM, Baker M, Elliss-Brookes L, Belot A. Describing socio-economic variation in life expectancy according to an individual's education, occupation and wage in England and Wales: An analysis of the ONS Longitudinal Study. SSM - Population Health 2021, 14, 100815.
  • Malhotra A, Rachet B, Bonaventure A, Pereira SP, Woods LM. Can we screen for pancreatic cancer? Identifying a sub-population of patients at high risk of subsequent diagnosis using machine learning techniques applied to primary care data. PLoS ONE 2021, 16(6), e0251876.
  • Woods LM, Rachet B, Morris M, Bhaskaran K, Coleman MP. Are socio-economic inequalities in breast cancer survival explained by peri-diagnostic factors?. BMC Cancer 2021, 21(1), 485.
  • Muller P, Woods L, Walters S. Temporal and geographic changes in stage at diagnosis in England during 2008–2013: A population-based study of colorectal, lung and ovarian cancers. Cancer Epidemiology 2020, 67, 101743.
  • Ingleby FC, Belot A, Atherton I, Baker M, Elliss-Brookes L, Woods LM. Assessment of the concordance between individual-level and area-level measures of socio-economic deprivation in a cancer patient cohort in England and Wales. BMJ Open 2020, 10(11), e041714.
  • Schaffar R, Belot A, Rachet B, Woods L. On the use of flexible excess hazard regression models for describing long-term breast cancer survival: A case-study using population-based cancer registry data. BMC Cancer 2019, 19(1), 107.
  • Marley C, El Hahi Y, Ferreira G, Woods L, Ramirez Villaescusa A. Evaluation of a risk score to predict future Clostridium difficile disease using UK primary care and hospital data in Clinical Practice Research Datalink. Human Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics 2019, 15(10), 2475-2481.
  • Muller P, Walters S, Coleman MP, Woods L. Which indicators of early cancer diagnosis from population-based data sources are associated with short-term mortality and survival?. Cancer Epidemiology 2018, 56, 161-170.
  • Spika D, Bannon F, Bonaventure A, Woods LM, Harewood R, Carreira H, Coleman MP, Allemani C. Life tables for global surveillance of cancer survival (the CONCORD programme): Data sources and methods. BMC Cancer 2017, 17(1), 159.
  • Schaffar R, Rachet B, Belot A, Woods LM. Estimation of net survival for cancer patients: Relative survival setting more robust to some assumption violations than cause-specific setting, a sensitivity analysis on empirical data. European Journal of Cancer 2017, 72, 78-83.
  • Morris M, Woods LM, Bhaskaran K, Rachet B. Do pre-diagnosis primary care consultation patterns explain deprivation-specific differences in net survival among women with breast cancer? An examination of individually-linked data from the UK West Midlands cancer registry, national screening programme and Clinical Practice Research Datalink. BMC Cancer 2017, 17(1), 155.
  • Morris M, Woods LM, Rachet B. What might explain deprivation-specific differences in the excess hazard of breast cancer death amongst screen-detected women? Analysis of patients diagnosed in the West Midlands region of England from 1989 to 2011. Oncotarget 2016, 7(31), 49939-49947.
  • Gauci D, Allemani C, Woods L. Population-level cure of colorectal cancer in Malta: An analysis of patients diagnosed between 1995 and 2004. Cancer Epidemiology 2016, 42, 32-38.
  • Woods LM, Morris M, Rachet B. No 'cure' within 12 years of diagnosis among breast cancer patients who are diagnosed via mammographic screening: Women diagnosed in theWest Midlands region of England 1989-2011. Annals of Oncology 2016, 27(11), 2025-2031.
  • Woods LM, Rachet B, O'Connell D, Lawrence G, Coleman MP. Impact of deprivation on breast cancer survival among women eligible for mammographic screening in the West Midlands (UK) and New South Wales (Australia): Women diagnosed 1997-2006. International Journal of Cancer 2016, 138(10), 2396-2403.
  • Woods LM, Rachet B, O'Connell DL, Lawrence G, Coleman MP. Are international differences in breast cancer survival between Australia and the UK present amongst both screen-detected women and non-screen-detected women? survival estimates for women diagnosed in West Midlands and New South Wales 1997-2006. International Journal of Cancer 2016, 138(10), 2404-2414.
  • Leung J, Macleod C, McLaughlin D, Woods LM, Henderson R, Watson A, Kyle RG, Hubbard G, Mullen R, Atherton I. Screening mammography uptake within Australia and Scotland in rural and urban populations. Preventive Medicine Reports 2015, 2, 559-562.
  • Rachet B, Maringe C, Woods LM, Ellis L, Spika D, Allemani C. Multivariable flexible modelling for estimating complete, smoothed life tables for sub-national populations. BMC Public Health 2015, 15(1), 1240.
  • Morris M, Woods LM, Rogers N, O'Sullivan E, Kearins O, Rachet B. Ethnicity, deprivation and screening: Survival from breast cancer among screening-eligible women in the West Midlands diagnosed from 1989 to 2011. British Journal of Cancer 2015, 113(3), 548-555.
  • Schaffar R, Rachet B, Belot A, Woods L. Cause-specific or relative survival setting to estimate population-based net survival from cancer? An empirical evaluation using women diagnosed with breast cancer in Geneva between 1981 and 1991 and followed for 20 years after diagnosis. Cancer Epidemiology 2015, 39(3), 465-472.
  • Morris M, Woods LM, Rachet B. A novel ecological methodology for constructing ethnic-majority life tables in the absence of individual ethnicity information. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 2015, 69(4), 361-367.
  • Li R, Abela L, Moore J, Woods LM, Nur U, Rachet B, Allemani C, Coleman MP. Control of data quality for population-based cancer survival analysis. Cancer Epidemiology 2014, 38(3), 314-320.
  • Ellis L, Woods LM, Esteve J, Eloranta S, Coleman MP, Rachet B. Cancer incidence, survival and mortality: Explaining the concepts. International Journal of Cancer 2014, 135(8), 1774-1782.