Dr Helena Lewis-Smith

Qualifications:

PhD (Health Psychology), MSc Health Psychology, BSc Applied Psychology

Position:

Associate Professor of Psychology

Department:

HAS - Health and Social Sciences

Telephone:

+441173281895

Email:

Helena.Lewis-Smith@uwe.ac.uk

Social media:

About me

Dr Helena Lewis-Smith is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the Centre for Appearance Redearch, specialising in psychosocial interventions across education, community, and clinical settings. Her research spans children, adolescents, and adults - including cancer populations - and focuses on promoting positive body image, improving psychological wellbeing, and addressing health inequalities. She investigates the sociocultural factors that shape body image and wellbeing, and develops and evaluates psychosocial interventions designed to translate directly into real-world impact.

Helena obtained her BSc in Applied Psychology from Cardiff University (2010) and her MSc in Health Psychology from the University of the West of England (2011), before completing a PhD exploring psychosocial adjustment among breast cancer survivors (2017). She has worked at the Centre for Appearance Research for over 10 years, and her research has attracted external funding from bodies including the NIHR and the Medical Research Foundation.

She currently leads the following externally-funded research programmes as Principal Investigator:

• Building Together: a support programme to improve body image for people living with and beyond head and neck cancer is a three-year programme (2026–2029) funded by the Medical Research Foundation to develop and co-produce, with people with lived experience, health professionals, and patient organisations, a psychosocial intervention for body image concerns in people living with and beyond head and neck cancer, in collaboration with the University of Liverpool, Ulster University, and NHS partners.
• Mapping the landscape of psychosocial support for younger women after breast cancer: foundations for intervention development and evaluation is a Bristol and Weston Hospitals Charity Legacy Grant (2025–2027) mapping psychosocial support for younger women after breast cancer, to inform the development and evaluation of future interventions.
• Physical activity after breast cancer: a co-produced, multi-perspective study to map barriers and facilitators and inform future intervention development is a Bristol and Weston Hospitals Charity Legacy Grant (2026–2027), mapping the barriers and facilitators to physical activity engagement among breast cancer survivors across individual, professional, organisational, and systems levels, to identify the most tractable and impactful focus for a subsequent, larger grant application.

Helena recently completed an NIHR Research for Patient Benefit-funded feasibility study (NIHR205415) evaluating an online, group-based cognitive behavioural therapy intervention (ABC: Accepting your Body after Cancer) for women following breast cancer treatment, ahead of a full-scale randomised controlled trial.

Alongside this portfolio, Helena works on an active programme of research on GLP-1 medications, body image, and sociocultural appearance pressures. She has also worked for many years as a co-investigator on research funded by Unilever's Dove Self-Esteem Project, developing and evaluating scalable body image interventions for young people worldwide, in partnership with organisations including UNICEF, Cartoon Network, and PlayMob.

Helena translates research into practice through partnerships with health services, schools, and charities, such as the NHS, Macmillan, and Maggie's Cancer Support. She supervises undergraduate, Masters, Doctorate (Health Psychology and Counselling Psychology), and PhD students, mentors early-career researchers, and maintains collaborations with universities and organisations worldwide. She is currently open to supervising new PhD students.

She is an active member of the British Psychological Society and the Academy for Eating Disorders. She serves on the editorial board of Body Image, and peer-reviews for academic journals and funding bodies including the MRC, NIHR, and UKRI.

Area of expertise

body image; eating disorder prevention; psycho-oncology; sociocultural influences; cosmetic procedures; GLP-1s; intervention de​velopment and evaluation; underserved groups

Publications

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