Cheryll Adams

Dr. Cheryll juggled several jobs in research, whilst practising as a health visitor for many years. She then joined the Community Practitioners and Health Visitors Association as the lead for research and practice development and subsequently as Lead Professional Officer.Whilst holding the research brief she led the organisation's work with NICE, including spending 3 years as Vice Chair of the National Collaborating Centre for Primary Care, and was a member of PHIAC, the NICE public health advisory committee and the Royal College of General Practitioners research group. She was also a member of the guideline development group for the Normal Postnatal Care guideline, and is now contributing to the quality standard.

Dr. Cheryll represented CPHVA on many national policy committees including as a member of the Chief Nursing Officer’s Advisory Group, the Transforming Community Services Board, the Modernising Nursing Careers Coalition and the DCSF Board of Stakeholders. She was also a founder of the Academy for Nursing, Midwifery and Nursing Research (UK), and currently sits on the NSPCC research ethics committee.

Dr. Cheryll led the CPHVA campaign against disinvestment in health visiting, and then worked with the Department of Health (DH) team on the Action on Health Visiting programme to start to rebuild the profession when she was a co-author of Getting it Right for Children and Families.

Since then Cheryll has had a portfolio career working in a range of roles related to the delivery of high quality health visiting practice, including as an advisor to the Department of Health where she developed the SAFER tool to strengthen safeguarding practice. Until recently she sat on the DH Healthy Child Programme Expert Group, and continues to act as a national advisor in various capacities.

Her research and professional interests are in infant, perinatal and family mental health, the topics for her masters and doctoral studies. Cheryll is a Professorial Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health and was one of the first 6 professionals inducted into the Nursing Times Hall of Fame. She regularly contributes to the health press and as a conference speaker in the UK and overseas.