{"id":709,"date":"2026-10-19T15:33:22","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T14:33:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.shu.ac.uk\/shusize\/?p=709"},"modified":"2026-10-19T15:34:38","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T14:34:38","slug":"a-doctors-measurement-from-clinic-to-child-health-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.shu.ac.uk\/shusize\/2026\/10\/19\/a-doctors-measurement-from-clinic-to-child-health-research\/","title":{"rendered":"\ud83d\udcdd A Doctor’s Measurement: From Clinic to Child Health Research"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to Saumya, our new Research Fellow on REACH, my UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship! She\u2019s already making a brilliant contribution to our work on measuring children\u2019s bodies for better health!<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

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As a doctor, I spent years using measurements to make decisions about health. <\/span><\/i>What I didn’t expect was to become fascinated by the measurements themselves.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Hello, I’m Saumya, and I’ve recently joined Dr Alice Bullas’ UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship as a Research Fellow at Sheffield Hallam University’s Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre (AWRC).\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The fellowship is built around a deceptively simple question:<\/span> \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How can we measure children’s health better?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It aims to identify more accurate, suitable and inclusive ways of measuring children’s bodies and assessing health. For me, joining the fellowship feels like a natural next step in a journey that began long before I entered research.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Looking Beyond the Growth Charts<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

My background is in medicine, and I’ve spent years working with patients and families in both clinical and community settings. Throughout my<\/span> training, I saw first-hand how much weight, quite literally, gets placed on a single number. A child comes in, gets weighed, gets measured, and within minutes a clinician is making decisions based on where that child sits on a growth chart or a BMI centile.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Most of the time, that number is genuinely useful. It can flag a child who needs closer attention, or reassure a worried parent that things are on track.\u00a0 <\/span>But over time, I found myself asking questions that extended beyond the clinic.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n