Judy Bradley is currently the Director of the Wellcome Trust-Wolfson Northern Ireland Clinical Research Facility.  Prior to this, Prof Bradley held a joint appointment in physiotherapy between Ulster University and Belfast Health and Social Care Trust. She completed her degree B.Sc. in physiotherapy in Ulster University in 1994 after which she worked as a physiotherapist within the UK. In 1999 she completed her PhD which focused on the development and testing of a field exercise test for cystic fibrosis (CF).  In 1998 she was appointed as a lecturer practitioner/reader in physiotherapy, between Ulster University and the Regional Adult CF Centre, until 2012 when she was appointed as a professor in physiotherapy at Ulster University. She joined Queen's University Belfast in July 2015 when appointed as Director of the Northern Ireland Clinical Research Facility.

 

Prof Bradley’s research programme is focused on respiratory health. She is involved in several programmes exploring the effectiveness of therapies linked to optimising airway clearance via pharmacological and non-pharmacological approaches as well as rehabilitation and adherence interventions. These programmes are funded, for example, by the Medical Research Council and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and are multi-centre, employing a wide range of trial designs (randomised controlled trial [RCT], observational) and methodologies (both quantitative and qualitative methods).

 

Prof Bradley is currently lead applicant on a NIHR grant, in excess of £1million, evaluating the efficacy of mucolytic therapies in bronchiectasis and leads this trial within up to twenty sites across the UK.

 

Prof Bradley is also a co-applicant on a NIHR-funded, RCT to determine if a health hub intervention can build better treatment habits in CF. Within this trial, she co-leads on a fidelity work stream focused on both measuring the quality of the adherence intervention delivered across the sites and on implementing quality improvement initiatives to optimise the adherence intervention.

 

Prof Bradley has lead roles within the Northern Ireland research infrastructure and is currently Director of the Northern Ireland Clinical Research Facility and Co-Lead of the Northern Ireland Clinical Research Network for Respiratory Health.