Ruth Garside is a social science researcher specialising in systematic review and evidence synthesis. She has over 20 years’ experience using quantitative and qualitative research methods to investigate a range of policy relevant health and social care questions. Her work has informed national policy customers including the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), Defra and the Home Office. She is particularly interested in using a broad range of evidence to investigate complex public health issues, in methods of synthesis for qualitative research and in theory led methods of review. Her recent projects focus on evaluating the mental health impact of nature-based social prescribing.

Her role at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health is to coordinate evidence synthesis across streams of research and to help develop these methods within environment and human health, including studies related to risks of AMR in coastal waters.