Professor Alice Smith

Professor Alice Smith leads the Leicester Kidney Lifestyle Team, a large multidisciplinary research group which aims to help kidney patients achieve the best possible health and wellbeing through appropriate lifestyle management. The team strive to produce high quality research and to involve patients, carers, healthcare professionals and stakeholders as partners to ensure delivery of research that meets the needs and expectations of our ultimate user-groups. Professor Smith’s research portfolio includes ~20 single- and multi-centre clinical trials, many of which are adopted on the NIHR portfolio, and have recruited some 6,000 participants since 2010.

Professor Smith’s primary research interest is the role of physical activity, exercise and lifestyle management in kidney disease. Her specific background is in inflammation and immune function but her translational research programme encompasses lab-based exploratory and mechanistic work, outcome measure evaluation, observational and epidemiological studies, clinical efficacy trials, lifestyle intervention development and effectiveness testing, implementation and service evaluation. A strong track record of patient involvement and engagement, and qualitative exploration of patient perspectives and experience underpins all the work.