• Practical Health Psychology and Behavioural Medicine
• Knowledge translation / implementation research
• Healthcare professional behaviour change with a focus on habits and routines
• Theory-based process evaluations of interventions alongside trials
• Behaviour change theory
• Cognitive emotion regulation
• Stakeholder engagement

Sebastian has experience in supervising PhD and MD students. He has supervised two MD students to a timely successful completion in a broad range of topics in applied health research. Currently he is supervising two PhD students.

Current postgraduate supervision:

Leah Buhrmann - Translating research evidence into health and social care policy and practice: using best practice across an integrated health and social care system (North East and North Cumbria ARC) to co-develop and evaluate tools for knowledge mobilisers and implementers

Claire Leader - How does the discourse of National Governmental policy influence social practices around the management of wellbeing of Nurses and Midwives working in the National Health Service? 

Dr Sebastian Potthoff is a Chartered Health Psychologist and Assistant Professor at Northumbria University whose research focuses on the intersection between Health Psychology and Implementation Science. In his research he draws upon theories and approaches from behavioural medicine to develop and evaluate interventions aimed at changing healthcare professional behaviour and health behaviours of patients and the public. During his Improvement Science PhD, he explored how to best support healthcare professionals with creating and breaking habit in the context of diabetes care. This work involved the development of Information Prescriptions, an electronic tool to support practitioners and people living with type 2 diabetes with making shared decisions around important health targets.

More recently he has been working on developing knowledge, tools and frameworks for tailoring strategies to support the implementation of evidence-based eHealth services in routine healthcare (e.g., in the ImpleMentAll project). Currently, he is leading research to further advance methods and tools to support comprehensive approaches to stakeholder engagement in implementation research and practice. Sebastian is an active member of the European Health Psychology Society, a Head Editor of the Practical Health Psychology Blog, and a Director of Open Digital Health an initiative to accelerate the implementation and evaluation of open digital health tools.