Dr Paul Whybrow

Paul joined Hull York Medical School in 2019 as Academic Lead for the Health & Society theme, taking on the Widening Participation lead in 2020 and the Gateway Year lead in 2021. Across these roles, his focus is on developing curricula and access routes that reflect the realities of health inequality and widen who gets to become a doctor — bringing a research-informed, evidence-based approach to both curriculum design and admissions practice.

This approach draws on a research background as a medical sociologist and methodologist. He holds a BSc in Sociology, an MA in Social Research Methods, and a PhD (Heriot-Watt University, 2013, ESRC-funded) on the social patterning of physical activity in urban environments. As a postdoctoral researcher at Newcastle University and the University of Bristol, he conducted extensive qualitative research within randomised controlled surgical trials, including on the By-Band-Sleeve bariatric surgery trial and the OPEN urethroplasty trial, alongside research into health inequalities and informal care. He now applies this mixed-methods grounding to evaluating and strengthening curriculum design and access initiatives at HYMS, including a current project evaluating the Medicine with a Gateway Year programme. He has supervised three PhD students to successful completion and is a long-standing member of the Medical Sociology Group of the British Sociological Association.