London to Leicester, Professor Louise Goff shares her career journey so far

Professor Louise Goff.

The academics at Leicester Diabetes Centre (LDC) are at the top of their fields. We interviewed Professor Louise Goff, who joined LDC as a Professor of Nutrition Science in April 2023, to find out more about her career journey.

It was during her degree in Human Nutrition and Dietetics at Cardiff Metropolitan University, that Louise became interested in research.

“I really enjoyed my training in the NHS and working with patients, but it was during my final year research dissertation that I found ‘the fire in my belly’ and I fell in love with research!” explains Louise.

This love of research led to Louise completing a PhD, and then post-doctoral research, at Imperial College London.

“It was my PhD that started my focus on type 2 diabetes and nutrition. I was really lucky that in my PhD I got to train in magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy techniques to study muscle lipid storage, which at the time was really ground-breaking" Louise adds.

Louise subsequently took up a teaching focused lectureship at London Metropolitan University before deciding that she missed the research environment and moved to a hybrid teaching and research post at King’s College London in 2009.

Louise joined LDC as a Professor of Nutrition Science in April 2023. Louise explains: “I decided to move to LDC because I wanted to work in a research unit and be part of a team of researchers focused on diabetes.”

Clinical research has been a key part of Louise’s career from the earliest stages, allowing her to see the results of her research develop. She explains: “During my PhD I conducted lots of small-scale diet intervention studies to manipulate insulin sensitivity and muscle lipids. I really loved the whole subject area! I continued to work in type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance in my post-doctoral position, being lucky to manage the Imperial site of a big multi-centre dietary intervention trial, called the RISCK study, which was ground-breaking in its day!

“By the time I was establishing myself as a Principal Investigator (PI), the evidence suggested that type 2 diabetes presented differently in different ethnic groups. I could see this in the RISCK study dataset. It was apparent that prediabetes was showing up at lower body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference values in people of South Asian or African-Caribbean ethnicity than in White Europeans. This sparked my interest in how ethnicity affects health.

“At that time, there were a fair number of researchers in the UK studying South Asian populations, but nobody was studying African-Caribbean populations, so I decided to address that gap and that’s what I’ve been doing for the last 15 years!”

In one of Louise’s research projects, Healthy Eating & Active Lifestyles for Diabetes (HEAL-D), she has developed a diabetes self-management education and support programme that is culturally tailored for people of African and Caribbean heritage. The programme was developed in response to stark inequalities in diabetes education provision for African-Caribbean patient groups and used community engagement research methods to understand the needs of people living with type 2 diabetes.

HEAL-D has now been implemented into NHS services and is helping people living with type 2 diabetes to feel empowered and to adopt healthy lifestyle practices.

Support from others shaped Louise’s career. She explains: “Without doubt, the most important and influential person in my career has been my PhD supervisor, Gary Frost, who has been a mentor throughout my entire career and has always championed me. Without his encouraging words, I would have probably given up on an academic career long ago!”

As with any career there have been challenges for Louise to overcome. “When I applied for the lectureship at King’s, the interview date was four weeks after I gave birth to my daughter. I came so close to pulling out of the interview because I couldn’t even get out of my pyjamas, let alone survive an interview! Luckily, somehow, I managed to get myself to the interview and got the job! Without that, I don’t know what my career would look like today.”

When asked about her future goals Louise jokes: “Aside from world peace? 😉 There is so much potential and so much work to do in the field of nutrition science in diabetes and cardiometabolic health. I am hoping my position at LDC offers the opportunity to develop a world-leading research group that sets about making a significant contribution to the evidence base for the role of diet in the development, prevention, and management of diabetes – particularly in relation to tackling inequalities.” 

You can learn more about the HEAL-D programme by visiting the website: www.heal-d.org