Dr Cheryl McQuire is a Research Fellow in Public Health Evaluation at the University of Bristol and Researcher-in-Residence with NHS Bristol, North Somerset, and South Gloucestershire Integrated Care Board.

Her work focuses on evaluating public health interventions and reducing health inequalities, with particular expertise in maternal and child health, alcohol-related harm, and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD).

Cheryl leads and conducts interdisciplinary research funded by the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR) and Youth Endowment Fund, spanning areas such as alcohol harm prevention, domestic abuse response, youth violence reduction, policy evaluation, and health service improvement.

She is the public involvement and engagement lead for the University of Bristol Health Data Science (HeDS) Group and a founding member of the NIHR SPHR Network for Natural Experiments.

Her research combines epidemiological and applied evaluation methods to inform policy and practice, and has influenced national guidelines (NICE), parliamentary debates, and health strategies.

An award-winning researcher and invited keynote speaker, Cheryl has published extensively in leading journals and contributes to national and international advisory boards and policy consultations on alcohol harm and FASD.

She is passionate about knowledge mobilisation, leading initiatives to improve clinical coding and data systems for FASD, and her work has been featured in over 200 global media outlets including the BBC, Sky News and CNN.
Cheryl also teaches on undergraduate medicine and postgraduate public health programmes and supervises MSc and PhD students. She holds a BSc in Applied Psychology (First Class), MSc in Forensic Psychology (Distinction), and a PhD in Epidemiology (Cardiff University).
Her overarching goal is to generate actionable evidence to shape policy, improve health equity, and drive meaningful change in public health practice.

Current Projects:

• Local Strategies for the Control of Harmful Commodities Advertising and Sponsorship (National Institute for Health and Care Research)
• Analysing the Consequences of Long Elective Waiting Lists (NHS BNSSG ICB)
• NIHR School for Public Health Research Pre-Application Award Recepient
• Multiagency interventions to reduce youth violence, exploitation and victimisation: Feasibility and Pilot Study (Youth Endowment Fund)
• Improving Clinical Coding for Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder
• Evaluating ADViSE to support sexual health clinicians to respond to domestic violence and abuse and sexual violence. 
• Mapping the landscape of prenatal alcohol prevention in the UK: a collaborative review. 
• Preventing prenatal alcohol exposure in the UK: a systematic review of the published and grey literature. (PROSPERO protocol).

Student Supervision:

• Felicia Frennesson PhD: No alcohol in pregnancy – better safe or better worry? A mixed-methods analysis of public discourse, digital communication and message framing ’ (submitted July 2025)
• Dominika Wotjczak PhD: Analysing misinformation on X/Twitter: Discourse Dynamics, Influencer Intent and Enhancing Detection through AI. (submitted July 2025)