Project Area: Health policy and systems research
Project Summary
BRIDGE – Building Routine Integration of Data on Housing and Mental Health for Guiding Evidence‑Based Recovery
Homelessness and mental health are deeply interconnected. People with severe mental illness are disproportionately represented among the homeless population, and unstable housing often leads to prolonged hospital admissions, unsafe discharges, and repeated readmissions. Yet Irish mental health services currently lack systematic ways of recording housing need, service accessibility, or housing‑related discharge delays. Without these indicators, services face structural blind spots that limit early intervention, accountability, and opportunities for improvement.
The BRIDGE PhD project aims to fill this gap by developing, piloting, and evaluating an implementation‑ready framework for the routine recording of housing need, service access, and delayed discharge within adult mental health services. Central to this work will be the creation of a validated minimum dataset and data dictionary, providing the first standardised indicators in Ireland for housing‑related determinants of mental health outcomes.
The project will unfold in three phases.
First, a scoping review will map international approaches to measuring housing and discharge indicators, identifying practices relevant to Ireland.
Second, a participatory co‑design process will engage service users, carers, clinicians, managers, and policymakers through World Café sessions and a Delphi consensus process, ensuring that lived experience and professional expertise are embedded in the blueprint.
Finally, a pilot study in two contrasting HSE Mental Health Approved Centres will test feasibility, acceptability, and clinical utility, guided by the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) and the Expert Recommendations for Implementing Change (ERIC).
Outputs will include a validated dataset, a refined implementation blueprint, and practical resources such as a toolkit, codebook, and training materials. These will be aligned with national strategies (Sharing the Vision, Sláintecare) and integrated into the forthcoming HSE Community Connect digital health platform. Academic outputs will include peer‑reviewed publications and conference presentations, while practitioner‑facing materials will support immediate uptake.
The project’s impact will be multi‑layered. In the short term, it will improve data quality and transparency, enabling earlier identification of individuals at risk of homelessness and supporting safer discharge planning. In the medium term, integrated measurement will inform quality improvement, highlight regional disparities, and guide equitable resource allocation. In the long term, the framework has the potential to reduce homelessness and health inequalities, strengthen cross‑sector collaboration, and position Ireland as a leader in linking housing and mental health data.
Skills Required
(If applying for this project you will be asked to outline how you meet the skills required below)
This PhD project requires a blend of methodological, analytical, and collaborative skills to ensure successful delivery. The interdisciplinary nature of the work—spanning mental health services, housing policy, implementation science, and participatory research—means the appointed Scholar should demonstrate core competencies while also having scope to develop new expertise during the doctoral journey.
Essential Skills
1. Research Design and Methodology
-Solid grounding in health services or social science disciplines.
-Ability to design and conduct mixed methods studies.
-Familiarity with evidence synthesis methods such as scoping reviews.
2. Data Management and Analysis
-Competence in handling health or social care datasets, including cleaning, coding, and basic statistical analysis.
-Experience with statistical packages such as SPSS, Stata, or R.
-Skills in qualitative data collection and analysis, including interviews, focus groups, and thematic analysis.
3. Implementation Science Awareness
-An interest in applied research and implementation science; prior familiarity with frameworks such as CFIR is desirable but not required, as structured training and applied mentoring will be provided through SPHeRE and the supervisory team.
-Ability to think critically about how theoretical models can be applied to service contexts.
4. Stakeholder Engagement and Communication
-Strong interpersonal skills to engage with service users, carers, clinicians, managers, and policymakers.
-Ability to communicate findings clearly in written and oral formats, tailoring outputs for different audiences.
-Commitment to inclusive practice and sensitivity to diverse perspectives.
5. Project Management and Organisation
-Capacity to plan and manage multiple tasks, coordinate timelines, and deliver outputs to schedule.
-Skills in documenting processes, maintaining data integrity, and ensuring compliance with ethical and governance requirements.
Desirable Skills
1. Knowledge of Mental Health and Housing Systems
-Familiarity with Irish mental health services, housing policy, or discharge planning processes.
-Awareness of national strategies such as Sharing the Vision and Sláintecare.
2. Technical and Digital Competence
-Experience with digital health platforms, registries, or electronic health records.
-Ability to contribute to the development of datasets, codebooks, and toolkits for integration with systems such as HSE Community Connect.
3. Public and Patient Involvement (PPI)
-Prior experience in co production with service users and carers.
-Skills in facilitating inclusive discussions and synthesising lived experience into research outputs.
4. Dissemination and Knowledge Translation
-Experience in preparing peer reviewed publications, conference presentations, or practitioner facing resources.
-Familiarity with Open Science practices, including FAIR data principles and preprint dissemination.
Feasibility for a PhD Scholar
Although ambitious, the project is carefully scoped for doctoral study. The Scholar will focus on developing and piloting a validated dataset and implementation blueprint, not full national rollout. The work is structured into discrete, achievable stages: evidence synthesis, dataset design, stakeholder engagement, pilot testing in selected sites, and evaluation using CFIR and ERIC. Each stage provides opportunities for peer reviewed outputs and professional development.
Feasibility is further supported by strong supervision and institutional partnerships, ensuring access to expertise, stakeholders, and pilot sites. The project is designed to train the Scholar in highly transferable skills—mixed methods research, implementation science, stakeholder engagement, and Open Science—making it both realistic and impactful within a PhD timeframe.
Supervisory team:
This project will be led by an experienced supervisory team whose combined expertise ensures methodological rigour, clinical relevance, and policy impact.
Dr. Alan Maddock, PI/Primary Supervisor
Lecturer in Psychology, Department of Health Psychology, RCSI.
Professor Catherine Darker, Professor in Health Services Research, Trinity College Dublin.
Professor Mary Clarke, Associate Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry, RCSI.
Dr. Alan Maddock (RCSI School of Population Health) is a Lecturer in Psychology and CORU registered social worker who brings a unique blend of frontline practice and academic leadership to this project. Prior to completing his PhD in psychology in 2019, he spent six years working in frontline social care working as a mental health social worker supporting individuals experiencing homelessness. In these roles, he assessed housing, health, and social care needs, liaised with multidisciplinary teams, and identified systemic gaps where delayed or absent housing assessments disrupted recovery and increased risks of repeated hospitalisation. In 2019, he was nominated as an advisor on homelessness to the Office of Social Services within the Department of Health in Northern Ireland, co‑authoring national guidance for social workers supporting individuals experiencing homelessness.
Since completing his PhD, he has developed a strong international profile in mental health interventions, theory, and research, reflected in invited lectures, podcasts, and keynote addresses. He is a recognised authority on mental health service delivery in Southeast Asia, serving as a research advisor to several non‑governmental organisations and founding the Cambodia Disability and Mental Health Research Network, which has secured over €320,000 in international grant funding. He has secured over €0.5 million as lead applicant and €1.5 million as co‑applicant across competitive national and international funding schemes, and has authored more than 40 peer‑reviewed publications (Scopus H‑Index 13), supervised PhD, Masters, and undergraduate students, and led national and international interdisciplinary research teams.
He has published widely across scoping reviews, systematic reviews, participatory methods, and mixed‑methods evaluations. His combined background in psychology, and social work practice equips him with the insight, methodological expertise, and leadership capacity to drive this project forward and deliver high‑impact, evidence‑informed outputs.
Professor Catherine Darker (Trinity College Dublin) is Professor of Health Services Research and a Chartered Health Psychologist with over two decades of experience in implementation science, behavioural medicine, and health services research. She coordinates Ireland’s first Postgraduate Certificate in Implementation Science, leading national capacity‑building in implementation theory, frameworks, and evaluation methods. Professor Darker has secured more than €3.7 million in competitive funding across 19 studies, including the HRB VISTA Programme (2023–2027) and the HRB Evidence for Policy INsPIRE project (2025–2028). She has led HSE‑funded process evaluations of National Clinical Programmes and the Early Intervention in Psychosis Model of Care, applying CFIR and ERIC frameworks to Irish service contexts. With over 100 peer‑reviewed publications, senior‑author contributions in leading journals, and invited keynote addresses for the Department of Health and international conferences, she is recognised for advancing theory‑informed implementation and participatory research. Her leadership roles within the European Implementation Collaborative, the Implementation Network of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and editorial boards further evidence her academic standing. In this project, she will co‑develop contextual analysis tools, support participatory co‑design, and ensure findings are translated into actionable blueprints for national scale‑up.
Professor Mary Clarke (RCSI School of Population Health) Professor Clarke has over two decades of engaged psychiatric epidemiology research and leadership. She has been principal investigator on grants totalling €11,316,926 and published over 150 peer-reviewed papers. MC is PI and National Director of the SPHeRE Programme https://www.sphereprogramme.ie/ which was refunded by the HRB in 2022 (€6 million, 2022-2030). The programme has to-date graduated 129 PhD students and will have graduated an additional 60+ PhD students by 2030. SPHeRE alumni have gone on to play key roles in the population health, policy and health services system in Ireland. Professor Clarke has supervised 9 PhDs to completion across the disciplines of psychiatry, psychology, epidemiology, social work, biostatistics and currently supervises 4 PhD students in public health, psychology, psychiatry, occupational therapy. MC has also supervised a number of postdoctoral students who have successfully stayed in academia and gained tenured positions.
Together, Dr. Maddock, Professor Darker and Professor Clarke provide complementary expertise in clinical practice, housing and mental health policy, implementation science, psychiatric epidemiology and health services research. Their combined supervision guarantees that the project will remain methodologically rigorous, policy‑relevant, and grounded in best practice, while offering the Scholar exceptional mentorship and training opportunities.
This project will be based in RCSI
