Bethan Treadgold is a Chartered Psychologist and Postdoctoral Research Fellow working within the Department of Health and Community Sciences. Bethan's research is built on her expertise in understanding the psychological aspects of self-managing health and in the delivery of healthcare (BSc Psychology 2016; MSc Health Psychology 2017, PhD Primary Care and Population Sciences 2022).
She specialises in qualitative research methods and conducts research spanning across digital health and online support, primary & secondary care workforce wellbeing, and the design and delivery of services for children and young people with long‑term conditions. Her research draws on rich partnerships across academia, the NHS, and the voluntary sector. Bethan collaborates within the Exeter Collaboration for Academic Primary Care (APEx), the Health Professions Education & Wellbeing Research Group and the Children and Young People's Mental Health Research Collaboration (ChYMe).
Bethan is committed to producing research that is rigorous, person‑centred and impactful across policy and practice.
Online peer support and digital health technologies in long-term condition management
Bethan’s digital health research explores how people use online and technology‑enabled resources to manage long‑term conditions, and how primary healthcare professionals can support safe, equitable engagement with these tools. A central focus of Bethan’s work explores how people use online peer support groups to access health-related information. In 2022-23, Bethan secured £164,894 in total funding from the NIHR School for Primary Care Research (SPCR) to develop a proposal and later lead a postdoctoral research fellowship project investigating the acceptability of, and potential procedures for, primary healthcare professionals quality approving peer-generated health information in peer online support forums (
Treadgold et al., 2025). Through this fellowship, she led a national mixed‑methods programme and is continuing to build a body of work on understandings how online peer support can be used safely and effectively in primary care settings. Her earlier doctoral research, funded by the NIHR SPCR and Solent NHS Trust (£67,493), similarly examined how parents and carers navigate online spaces when seeking eczema‑related advice and support (
Treadgold et al., 2020,
Treadgold et al., 2023).Bethan has also investigated digital transformation more broadly in primary care: how patients, carers and clinicians navigate increasingly digitised health systems. She has investigated patients', carers' and primary healthcare professionals' experiences of using remote consultation services in primary care, as well as how professionals support disadvantaged groups of patients and carers in accessing such services (
Treadgold et al., 2025, Stockwell et al., 2025,
Newbould et al., 2024, Abel et al., 2024, Parsons et al., 2024). Bethan is now extending this programme of work to explore the potential of digital health technologies to optimise medication adherence among older adults with asthma or COPD, broadening her interest in how digital tools can be designed and implemented to improve self‑management and clinical outcomes (
Mahmoud et al., 2025).
NHS workforce, wellbeing and organisational change
Bethan’s second major area of research investigates the changing nature of primary and secondary workforce pressures and strategies to support staff wellbeing and recognition. Bethan is currently investigating how multi‑level culture‑change interventions can improve staff wellbeing across the NHS (
Collaborative Action for Research-Engaging in Staff Wellbeing). She is working in partnership with academic institutions, integrated care systems, national policy and local service stakeholders across England to co-design and evaluate wellbeing interventions that create more supportive workplaces. In addition, Bethan has contributed to
research tackling the growing retention crisis in the UK primary care workforce, by investigating the factors influencing general practitioners' decisions to stay, reduce, or leave clinical practice. She has also contributed to research on the measurement of postural hypotension in primary care to understand how national guidance translates into everyday practice (
Cross et al., 2025). Collectively, her research illustrates the complexities of delivering equitable digital care and the evolving workforce pressures and service‑level adaptations that accompany it. Prior to this research, Bethan investigated the assessment process for the The National Clinical Excellence Awards in England and Wales, which were designed as a form of performance-related pay, to reward high-performing senior doctors and dentists. Bethan investigated how assessors and other stakeholders defined excellence, differentiated between levels of excellence, and co-developed a revised scoring scheme to ensure unbiased definitions and scoring (
Treadgold et al., 2023,
Abel et al., 2024).
Children and young people's health services and care pathways
Bethan has recently began collaborating on research together with the
Children and Young People's Mental Health Research Collaboration (ChYMe) and
Bath Mental Health Research Group, focusing on mapping services and care pathways for children and young people with neurodevelopmental conditions and externalising disorders, including ADHD, autism, conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder and intellectual disability. This developing strand of research strengthens her broader interest in improving access, equity and outcomes across health and care systems. Previously, Bethan conducted research evaluating specialist paediatric neuro-oncology rehabilitation services across the UK and whether the needs of children and their parents and carers were being met by these services
(Treadgold et al., 2019).
