Professor Cliona Ni Cheallaigh is Consultant in General Medicine and Infectious Disease at St James’s Hospital in Dublin, Associate Professor of Medicine at Trinity College Dublin, and Lead Clinician in the world’s first ‘Inclusion Health Service’ at St James’s Hospital.

Professor Ni Cheallaigh’s academic work includes dozens of peer-reviewed publications and over 9000 citations for which she has achieved a Hirsch or ‘H-index’ of academic productivity of 32 (which, for those unfamiliar with the grading of academics, is exceptionally high). Remarkably, too, she has obtained over €8 mn in grants as lead or co-applicant since 2019. But her academic prowess is more than matched by her exceptional eloquence and powers of persuasion, which she has brought to bear on the neglected area of social exclusion and homelessness in Ireland, and through which she has achieved real progress in terms of understanding why homelessness is so bad for people’s health (the current average age of death of a homeless single man in Dublin is 44, while for women it is 38). ‘We know that adversity affects biology’, she says, but it is largely an evidence-free zone. Nonetheless, her mantra is that ‘inclusion is within everyone’s ability’.

In this inspiring conversation, Professor Ni Cheallaigh explains how (with a couple of irreplaceable colleagues) she harnessed her academic expertise and inherited diplomatic skills in the development of a radically-improved and practical service for the homeless in Dublin’s inner city, along with the multidisciplinary All-Ireland Inclusion Health Forum in 2018. She also gives some powerful advice for all (would-be) medical mums!

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