Austen El-Osta

Austen El-Osta is a British public health researcher, policy advisor & educator. He is Director of the Self-Care Academic Research Unit (SCARU) at Imperial College London, and an internationally recognised thought leader in self-care, lifestyle medicine, digital health & primary care transformation. He is the principal investigator of the INTERACT Study (Measuring Loneliness in the UK), the largest global empirical study on loneliness to date.

Education & qualifications

El-Osta holds a PhD in Medicine from King’s College London, where he completed his doctoral research under the supervision of Professor John Marshall, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship in laser-tissue interaction. He also holds an MSc in Molecular Biology & Pathology of Viruses from Imperial College London, an MPA with distinction from London South Bank University, and a BSc in Molecular Biology & Genetics from Queen Mary University of London. He is currently completing a Master of Lifestyle Medicine (MLM) at the University of Thessaly.

Academic & research career

At Imperial College London, El-Osta serves as Director of SCARU (2017–present) & Research Manager in the Department of Primary Care & Public Health. He has held senior roles across Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust since 2013 and previously held academic & research appointments at King’s College London, Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust & the Central & North West London NHS Foundation Trust.

He led SCARU to become the UK’s first academic unit dedicated to the science of self-care. His work focuses on developing evidence-based frameworks & tools to support self-driven healthcare systems, including the Self-Care Matrix, and the Self-Care Capability Assessment (CAPITAN) toolkit.

Research leadership

El-Osta is principal investigator or co-investigator on multiple NIHR-funded studies:

• INTERACT – Measuring Loneliness in the UK using UCLA-3 & Direct Measure scales, with over 170,000 respondents.
• UNITY – Public attitudes toward HIV PrEP access in UK pharmacies.
• RAPID – Screening tool for domestic violence & abuse.
• WHISPAs – Workplace health promotion research.
• HealthPlace – Digital platform for integrated mental health care.

Leadership & appointments

El-Osta is also Primary Care Theme Lead at the NIHR In Vitro Diagnostics Cooperative (London).

He is Visiting Senior Lecturer at King’s College London and the University of Technology Sydney. He serves on several WHO working groups related to self-care interventions and health knowledge translation. He is a trustee of the International Self-Care Foundation and of the UK Self-Care Forum.

Awards & recognition

• Chartered Manager, CMI UK (2013)
• NIHR Primary Care Research Trailblazer – Chair of CRN NWL (since 2019)
• Associate Editor, Journal of Lifestyle Medicine
• Fellow, WHO Collaborating Centre for Public Health Education & Training

Selected publications

• El-Osta, A. et al. (2019). The Self-Care Matrix: a unifying framework. Journal of Medical Internet Research.
• El-Osta, A. et al. (2024). Navigating health autonomy through self-care. Open Access Government.
• El-Osta, A. et al. (2025). Public attitudes toward PrEP in UK pharmacies. BJGP.

External links

• Imperial College London profile
• Google Scholar
• ORCID profile
• Research Features article on SCARU

WikiProjects

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