Meet the Ellison-Cliffe Travelling Fellows: Dr Phoebe Hodges
At the end of 2021 a number of RSM members in the early stages of their careers competed for the prestigious Ellison-Cliffe Travelling Fellowship. Here we meet the successful candidates and find out more about their plans for undertaking specialist training during their time overseas.
Dr Phoebe Hodges is a gastroenterology registrar from Severn Deanery and is currently working as a clinical research fellow at the Blizard Institute, Barts and the London School of Medicine.
Winning an Ellison-Cliffe Travelling Fellowship will enable Phoebe to spend a year in Zambia, southern Africa, where she will be based at the University Teaching Hospital in the capital Lusaka, which is the tertiary referral centre for the country.
Phoebe’s research focus is the emergency of inflammatory bowel disease and the potential environmental triggers. She says:
“The travelling fellowship will be hugely valuable in supporting my research. Increasing incidence of inflammatory bowel disease seems to go hand-in-hand with the demographic transition, and its emergence in sub-Saharan Africa is likely to prove a significant healthcare challenge in the coming years. Research in this area has so far been limited, so creating a platform for future studies will be important.”