Vanessa Pinfold Advisory group member

Vanessa Pinfold is the co-founder and research director of the McPin Foundation a specialist mental health research charity. She is the chair of the Alliance of Mental Health Research Funders, a trustee of MHRUK and an associate research fellow at the University of Plymouth. 

She is a geographer by academic background, with a PhD from the University of Nottingham. Vanessa has worked in mental health research for over 25 years and established the McPin Foundation with a staff team in 2013 that has since grown to employ approximately 25 team members and many more advisors, and consultants. She leads the McPin Foundation which collaborates extensively across the sector to deliver high quality research that prioritises topics most relevant to improving mental health in communities everywhere. The focus is on putting expertise from experience at the heart of mental health research including using peer research methods. Her own work, from time spent at IOPPN, KCL and Rethink Mental Illness as well as currently, has focused on health services research including studies addressing stigma and discrimination, carer involvement in services, social inclusion, patient and public involvement in research. In the past few months McPin has been working with researchers on a number of Covid-19 studies, relating both to young people and adults. This includes a study with THIS Institute in Cambridge, which is funded by the Health Foundation.