Dr Felix Naughton – Research Associate

BSc, MSc, PhD, CPsychol

After graduating with a BSc in Psychology in 2000, Felix worked for the North West Deanery as a database administrator and IT technician, rolling out a medical education training database to 22 NHS Trusts. In 2004 Felix returned to academia by completing an MSc in Health Psychology at Bath University. Felix completed his Cancer Research UK funded PhD at the General Practice and Primary Care Research Unit, University of Cambridge, in 2010, supervised by Professor Stephen Sutton.

Felix’s research interests primarily lie in understanding how to change health behaviours, particularly smoking and smoking during pregnancy. He is specifically interested in the use of tailoring in behaviour change interventions and the use of new technologies in health care and health promotion, particularly mobile phones. His PhD focused on the development and evaluation of a computer tailored smoking cessation self-help programme for pregnant smokers. This automated program (called MiQuit www.miquit.co.uk) provides smokers with individualised smoking cessation support primarily via mobile phone text messages tailored to personal characteristics, beliefs and behaviours. Recent work also includes the iQuit in Practice trial which evaluates a tailored written and text-message smoking cessation support system for smokers attending level 2 smoking cessation support at their GP surgery. He is currently a co-investogator in an NIHR funded programme of studies looking at improving the effectiveness and reach of NHS support for smoking cessation in pregnancy. This includes further refinement of the MiQuit program to incorporate greater interactive facilities and to provide more control for the user in support delivery, and several evaluation studies.

Felix is a Registered Health Psychologist, having completed the British Psychological Society’s (BPS) stage 2 qualification in Health Psychology, a chartered member of the BPS and is a full member of the Division of Health Psychology. As part of his clinical practice he worked as a smoking cessation counsellor specialising in supporting pregnant smokers. He is also a member of the Society for Academic Primary Care and the European Health Psychology Society. He is currently the convenor of Synergy, a subdivision of the European Health Psychology Society set up to promote networking and collaboration among Health Psychologists across Europe http://www.ehps.net/synergy/.

Felix is a module leader for a health promotion module for the University’s MPhil in Public Health and is a course and thesis supervisor. Within the University he supervises and teaches undergraduate students studying psychology. He co-supervises PhD student Silja-Riin Voolma. Felix is also an Honorary Lecturer at the University of Nottingham.

Recent publications:

Sutton S, Smith S, Jamison J, Boase S, Mason D, Prevost AT, Brimicombe J, Sloan M, Gilbert H, Naughton F. Study protocol for iQuit in Practice: a randomised controlled trial to assess the feasibility, acceptability and effecitveness of tailored web- and text-based facilitation of smoking cessation in primary care. BMC Public Health, 2013, 13(1): 324

Naughton F, Jamison J, and Sutton S. Attitudes towards SMS text message smoking cessation support: a qualitative study of pregnant smokers. Health Education Research, accepted for publication.

Naughton F, Eborall H, and Sutton S. Dissonance and disengagement in pregnant smokers: a qualitative study. Journal of Smoking Cessation, in press (available on CJO doi:10.1017/jsc.2013.4).

Naughton F, Alexandrou E, Dryden S, Bath J, and Giles M. Understanding treatment delay among problem drinkers: what inhibits and facilitates help seeking? Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy, in press (doi:10.3109/09687637.2012.745121).

Jamison J, Naughton F, Sutton S, and Gilbert H. Delivering smoking cessation support by mobile phone text message: what information do smokers want? A focus group study. Journal of Biobehavioral Research, in press.

Naughton F, Prevost AT, Gilbert H, and Sutton S. Randomised controlled trial evaluation of a tailored leaflet and SMS text message self-help intervention for pregnant smokers (MiQuit). Nicotine and Tobacco Research 2012, 14, 569-577.

Naughton F. Tailoring behavioural support and tailoring health psychology careers. In Forshaw MJ & Sheffield D. (Eds) Health Psychology in Action. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell 2012.

Naughton F. Stage 2: The ‘PhD route’ experience. Health Psychology Update, 2011; 20 (3), 16-19.

Naughton F, and Sutton S. Going mobile: delivering behavioural support via SMS text messages. The European Health Psychologist 2011; 13: 27-29.

Llewellyn DJ, Lang IA, Langa KM, Naughton F, Matthews FE. Exposure to secondhand smoke and cognitive impairment in non-smokers: national cross sectional study with cotinine measurement. BMJ 2009; 338: b462.

Naughton F, Sutton S, and Prevost T. Self-help smoking cessation interventions in pregnancy – a systematic review and meta-analysis. Addiction 2008; 103(4): 566-579.