Dr Mark Adley was recently awarded an SSA fellowship. He will work with South Asian and Muslim communities to co-develop practical resources that improve access to drug and alcohol treatment.
Dr Mark Adley is a research associate at Newcastle University. He has worked across substance use services, criminal justice, homelessness, and primary care in the North East of England.
Mark received an SSA bursary in 2009 to study Addiction Studies at the University of Leeds, before completing an MSc in Public Health (Addictions) at Liverpool John Moores University in 2020. In 2025, he completed a PhD funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) at Newcastle University’s Population Health Sciences Institute. His new SSA-funded fellowship will focus on improving treatment outcomes for people from South Asian and Muslim communities.
Responding to inequalities in drug and alcohol treatment
Drug and alcohol problems have a significant impact on people, families, and communities. While effective treatment is available, it is not accessed equally by everyone: in 2024, almost 90% of people receiving treatment in England were White, rising to around 98% in some parts of the North East. Evidence suggests that South Asian and Muslim communities face additional barriers to seeking support, including stigma, concerns about confidentiality, and services that may not always feel culturally appropriate.
Mark will explore how South Asian and Muslim people experience drug and alcohol treatment across the UK, identifying examples of services that are working well and understanding what helps people engage with support.
“We’re going to be working with communities to work out what the problems are, and how we can fix them.”
Improving cultural competence and reducing barriers to care
Working with Public Involvement Leads Mehru-Nisa Shah and Dilesh Popat, Mark will involve community members and people with lived experience to co-develop a practical training programme and toolkit for communities and treatment providers. The resources will provide clear information about treatment, promote harm reduction, and encourage better communication between services and the communities they serve.
The training and toolkit will be tested in Newcastle upon Tyne and one other English city, with participants helping to evaluate their success. The findings will be shared widely through a national online event, alongside accessible summaries, reports, videos and online content.
“I would like to see drug treatment being more widely inclusive of all population groups. The more broad we are in our scope, the better it is for everyone.”
Mark’s work aims to make drug and alcohol treatment more accessible, inclusive, and culturally appropriate. By strengthening relationships between services and South Asian and Muslim communities, the project has the potential to increase engagement with treatment, reduce inequalities in access to care, and improve outcomes for individuals, families and communities.
by Fiona Hughes
The SSA supports careers in addiction research through funding bursaries for postgraduate study and professional development, pre-doctoral support for the development of PhD applications, PhD studentships, post-doctoral support for the development of fellowship applications, and fellowships. The current round of applications for PhD studentships and fellowships will close on 30 July 2026.
