Caroline Lee

Caroline Lee serves as a Senior Research Associate at Cambridge Public Health, housed within the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. Her interdisciplinary research spans public health, mental health, employment, education, and childcare, employing qualitative and participatory methodologies to address complex societal challenges through community-centered approaches.

Research Interests

Lee's work centers on ageing and public mental health, with emphasis on community-based interventions for older adults during psychosocial stress. She investigates participatory approaches in place-based decision-making, food retail systems' impact on community wellbeing in disadvantaged areas, and intersections of health inequalities, rural health, ethnicity/migration dynamics, and peer support models in social care. Her methodology prioritizes co-design and community engagement to ensure research translates into actionable public health strategies.

Scientific Awards

• Prince of Wales Global Sustainability Fellow

Projects and Leadership

As Prince of Wales Global Sustainability Fellow, Lee leads a mixed-methods study combining scoping reviews, case studies, and participatory co-design to examine how food retailers can build community resilience. She co-leads a national realist-informed case study on local authorities' public health strategies under austerity. Additional projects include developing age-friendly rural communities, supporting healthy communities fund evaluations, advancing ethnicity/migration research in public health, engaging communities on data risk, investigating peer support for older prisoners, and evaluating creative mental health research with young people in CAMHS.