Elaine-Boyle

Elaine Boyle

Elaine Boyle is Professor of Neonatal Medicine at the University of Leicester and Honorary Consultant Neonatologist at the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, UK. She was recently appointed to the Leicester City Football Club (LCFC) Professorship in Child Health, supported by funds donated by LCFC for research to improve child health in Leicester. Elaine trained and worked as a nurse for several years before studying medicine at the University of Sheffield, qualifying as a doctor in 1993. She did postgraduate paediatric training in Sheffield and Birmingham. Before taking up her post in Leicester in 2006, she trained in academic neonatal medicine in Edinburgh, and at McMaster University, Canada. Here, she gained an MD for work on assessment and management of pain in neonates, an MSc in Epidemiology, and a PhD focused on enteral feeding in preterm neonates. She remains active in these areas, most recently as the UK National Principal Investigator for the EU-funded Europain Survey, and co-investigator on the UK SIFT – Speed of Increasing milk Feeds Trial.

Elaine’s major research interest is effects of gestational age at birth on neonatal and childhood outcomes, and in particular the effects of moderate-late preterm and early term birth. She led the Late And Moderately preterm Birth Study (LAMBS), one of the first large population-based studies in this area. She is Chief Investigator for SurfON, a large multicentre trial of early surfactant versus expectant management in late preterm and early term infants with respiratory distress, which is funded by the NIHR HTA. She is a co-investigator on the following studies: OptiPrem (Place of care for babies born at 27-31 weeks of gestation) funded by the NIHR HS&DR; NESCI (Neonatal Unit Smoking Cessation Intervention), funded by the NIHR RfPB and TIGAR (Tracking the health, educational and economic impact of gestational age at birth: a longitudinal record linkage study) funded by the MRC.