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Staff Profile

Dr Anna Robinson-Barella

Lecturer in Clinical Pharmacy and Medicines Inequalities

Background

Anna is a Lecturer in Clinical Pharmacy and Health- and Medicines- Inequality, and is the Director for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), at Newcastle School of Pharmacy. She is also a Specialist Clinical Pharmacist, with a wealth of experience working in Primary and Secondary care settings across the North-East of England.


Qualifications: 

  • PhD, 2023
  • Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), 2019
  • Post Graduate Diploma in Advanced Clinical Pharmacy Practice (PG Dip)
  • Masters of Pharmacy (MPharm)
  • National: Anna also holds national positions with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) including being a Professional Mentor, a member of the Annual Conference steering group, and was an inaugural member of the Early Career Pharmacist Advisory Group. 
  • International: Anna sits on the International Collaboration of Pharmacy Journal Editors (ICPJE) early career researcher advisory board and the Editorial Board for two pharmacy journals.

Professional registration: 

  • General Pharmaceutical Council 

Memberships:

  • Royal Pharmaceutical Society 
Research

Research focus: Anna's research interests lie in working with people from minoritised and marginalised communities. In particular, Anna's research seeks to target medicines- and health- inequalities.

Research expertise: qualitative research methodologies, including remote interviewing and co-design; equality, diversity and inclusivity in research; interpretation and translator services in research; patient and public involvement and engagement; and qualitative evidence synthesis techniques, including meta-ethnography.

Recent work:

  • accessibility of healthcare and pharmacy services for marginalised populations;
  • barriers and enablers impacting people from ethnically minoritised groups when seeking medication support;
  • integration of cultural competence in the initial education and training of pharmacy students;
  • establishing cultural humility and cultural competence within the pharmacy profession;
  • addressing medicines use and deprescribing in palliative care settings.
  • Full list here: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=EoYP-C0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

Research funding:

  • 2025-2026: Community-based healthcare: reducing inequalities, reviewing accessibility.
  • 2024-2025: NIHR Team Science Award in collaboration with University of Edinburgh colleagues: understanding inequalities in ageing-in-place for people with multiple long-term conditions.
  • 2024: NIHR Undergraduate Internship Programme Grant focusing on the role of familial and informal caregivers amongst ethnically minoritised communities.
  • 2023-2026: NIHR Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Grant to co-design and co-produce a digital health animation to support people from ethnically minoritised groups.
  • 2022-2023: Engage FMS Newcastle University Tilly Hale Award for Celebrating Excellence in Public and Patient Involvement and Engagement.
  • 2022-2023: Newcastle University Education Development Fund grant to conduct research into the design, implementation and delivery of a culturally competent pharmacy curriculum for pharmacists of the future. 

In her previous role as Research Assistant at the School of Pharmacy, her work explored accessibility to medicines review services for ethnic minority communities in the North East of England. She was funded in this post by the NIHR North East and North Cumbria Applied Research Collaboration (ARC). This award-winning work was recognised with an 'Investing in You' Dialogue and Change award from the NIHR. 

In 2023, Anna completed her PhD, which was undertaken with funding from the Newcastle University Dr WE Harker PhD studentship in surgical sciences, supervised by Prof Andy Husband, Mr Robert Slight and Prof Sarah Slight. This work focused on the use and optimisation of digital technologies to support healthier lifestyle change in surgical patient cohorts. 

Teaching

Anna is Stage Lead for Stage 2 of the MPharm programme.

In addition, she leads on:

  • Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) for the School of Pharmacy
  • Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) for the Newcastle Patient Safety Research Collaborative (PSRC),

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Anna is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).

She contributes to the teaching and assessments of Clinical Pharmacy across all stages of the MPharm degree at Newcastle.

Anna is a supervisor and co-supervisor of PhD students, Masters-level dissertations and student projects within the School of Pharmacy, as well as wider Public Health postgraduate programmes at the University. 

Anna is an external supervisor for pharmacy colleagues undertaking the NIHR DCAF, NIHR PCAF and NIHR IPF.

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Previous roles held include: Academic Lead for Professionalism and Professional Standards for the School of Pharmacy and Academic Lead for Peer Mentoring.

Publications