Pippa Belderson

Pippa Belderson is a Research Fellow at the Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia. She is also a member of the Centre for Research on Children and Families, Public Health group, and Child Protection & Family Support team at UEA.

Dr. Belderson holds a BA in anthropology and a MMedSci in nutrition. Her PhD combined these interests, examining the influences on food choice among older adults.

Her research primarily focuses on smoking cessation interventions, particularly in specialized populations and settings including pregnancy, emergency departments, and culturally specific contexts for Muslim smokers during Ramadan. She employs social research methods including surveys, interviews, focus groups, and secondary data analysis. Her work often involves collaboration with service users and practitioners to ensure findings are accessible to the practice community and policy makers.

Dr. Belderson's recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on evaluating smoking cessation programs through rigorous clinical trials and mixed-methods approaches. Her work spans multiple healthcare settings including emergency departments, prenatal care, and community-based interventions, with emphasis on process evaluation and implementation science to understand how interventions work in real-world contexts.

Dr. Belderson has been actively involved in numerous research projects since joining UEA in 1999, beginning with a national evaluation of school breakfast clubs and expanding to various health and social care research initiatives. She currently leads or contributes to multiple active research projects including "Developing, optimising and evaluating a conversion of standard smoking cessation support in pregnancy into a digital support package (eSupport)" (2024-2030), "Evaluation of a short-term autism support service & measuring its impact on autistic adults' wellbeing" (2023-2024), and "Providing stop smoking support in early pregnancy" (2023-2024).