DrEleanor Winpenny

Eleanor focuses on the developmental period of adolescence and early adulthood, to understand how structural, social and environmental determinants contribute to trajectories of health behaviours and the development of health inequalities. Eleanor’s work sits at the intersection of  behavioural and life course epidemiology and makes use of advanced statistical methods for longitudinal analysis.

Eleanor's research spans three main areas:

(1) The transition from education into employment, the interventions and policy that can support transition into good quality employment, and how different education/employment pathways contribute to health inequalities

(2) The development of health behaviours (diet, physical activity and sleep) across adolescence and early adulthood, and the changing social and environmental determinants which may influence such changes and development of health inequalities

(3) The mechanisms by which social exposures influence biological pathways and contribute to inequalities in cardiometabolic health and ageing

Eleanor is PI of the Diet and Eating Behaviours across Early Adulthood Transitions (DEBEAT) study (www.debeat.org) which is collecting new data on adolescents as they transition out of secondary school. In wave 1 (2023-4) and wave 2 (2024-5) the study team collected data on diet (24hr recalls), health behaviours and structural and environmental determinants of health from ~2000 young adults, age 17-18 years old at wave 1.  We are analysing associations between changes in social and physical environments and changes in diet and health behaviour outcomes over the transition out of school.

Eleanor is the Mentoring Officer of the Society for Social Medicine and Population Health. Prior to joining Imperial, Eleanor held an MRC Career Development Award fellowship within the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge. Her PhD was in Developmental Neuroscience, which she completed at the John van Geest Centre for Brain Repair, University of Cambridge.