Stephen Spencer is an intensive care and acute medicine specialist registrar and Wellcome Trust Clinical PhD Fellow at the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Programme. As a medical student at the University of Manchester, he founded an international health research charity in rural and remote areas of Madagascar, where he led and conducted community-based observational research. Prior to his PhD Fellowship, he completed a distance learning MSc in Epidemiology with distinction at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Diploma of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM).

Stephen’s research focuses on breathlessness, complex care and acute care service design in low-resource settings. During his PhD Fellowship he worked as clinical lead in Malawi on the National Institute for Health and Care Research Multilink study (Multimorbidity-associated emergency hospital admissions; a “screen and link” strategy to improve outcomes for high-risk patients in sub-Saharan Africa) and delivered this multicentre study to time and target. During this time, he also led the Breathlessness in Sub-Saharan Africa study as principal investigator. The study was designed to understand evolving clinical phenotypes and pathophysiology of acute severe illness, with a focus on breathlessness syndromes to develop context-appropriate diagnostic approaches and design integrated care pathways. Stephen also oversees the ultrasound arm of the Building Respiratory support in East Africa Through High flow versus low flow oxygen Evaluation trial in Malawi and collaborates on the African Research Collaboration on Sepsis.