Dr. Rebecca Rhead is a Lecturer in Society and Mental Health at King’s College London with expertise in quantitative social science and population mental health. She is a member of the Health Inequalities Research Group, her work focuses on the social determinants of mental health and reducing health inequalities at the population level.

She is a co-applicant on the Wellcome Discovery Award funded 'Collective Action for Race Equity in Health and Social Care (CARE-HSC)' programme, a £4.7m, 7-year study funded in January 2025. Led by researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) and the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London, in collaboration with Black Thrive Global and international partners in the United States and Sweden, the programme aims to address and dismantle structural factors that perpetuate racial discrimination and harassment within health and care systems.

Rebecca also co-leads the Narrowing Inequalities Platform within the UKRI Population Health Improvement (PHI-UK) Population Mental Health Consortium, working in partnership with public health bodies, mental health services, and community organisations to inform prevention strategies and improve mental health outcomes.

Her previous work as part of the TIDES study (Tackling Inequalities and Discrimination Experiences in Health Services) focused on ethnic inequalities in UK healthcare, uncovering systemic disparities in access, experiences, and outcomes. This includes investigations into workplace discrimination among NHS staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, variations in referral pathways to NHS Talking Therapies for ethnically minoritised service users, and the compounded effects of intersecting identities on mental health service use. These findings have informed strategies to address inequities in mental health care and workforce experiences.

Rebecca now leads two major research initiatives: the CONNECT study (part of the Marginalised Communities and Mental Health programme at the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health) examining mental health and well-being among racially minoritised communities in Southwark and Lambeth. She also leads the CORE project, funded by Impact on Urban Health, which provides seed funding for community-led research initiatives. Through CORE, she has developed a funded internship programme at King’s to support recent graduates pursuing research careers in population health inequalities. Rebecca recently undertook an MRC-funded secondment at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at UCL, where she collaborated with multidisciplinary teams to apply advanced quantitative methods to UK cohort data, investigating the social, health, and financial impacts of COVID-19.

She currently co-leads the Social and Community Mental Health module within the MSc Mental Health Studies programme and serves as a guest lecturer for Sociology of Health and Illness (MSc Public Health), Statistics for Mental Health Research II (MSc Mental Health Studies), and Culture, Identity and Mental Health (BSc Psychology). She is particularly interested in supervising PhD students working on quantitative projects related to ethnic and socioeconomic inequalities in mental health outcomes, service access and health system equity.