Following a highly competitive application process involving almost 1,900 applicants, Dr Davies has been named one of 109 new Churchill Fellows by the Winston Churchill Fellowship. The Fellows represent a wide range of professions, backgrounds, and communities across the UK, united by a commitment to creating positive change through international learning.
Through the Fellowship, Dr Ceryl Davies will examine how countries such as Sweden and Canada have embedded compassionate care approaches within cervical screening programmes, including flexible care pathways, and access-focused service design.
The project will explore how these international approaches could inform improvements to a model of compassionate care across health and social care services in the UK, particularly for women who face barriers to accessing support due to their previous experiences of sexual violence and abuse.
The Fellowship will involve collaboration with internationally recognised leaders in compassionate and trauma-informed care. In Sweden, Dr Ceryl Davies will work with the National Centre for Knowledge on Men’s Violence Against Women (NCK) at Uppsala University, including Professor Carolina Överlien and Dr Johanna Belachew, whose work has focused on violence, trauma, and women’s access to support and healthcare services. This will provide insight into how Sweden has embedded compassionate and access-focused approaches within broader public health and screening systems. In Canada, she will collaborate with Professor Shane Sinclair at University of Calgary, whose internationally recognised work on compassion science and the Sinclair Compassion Model has helped define how compassion is understood and measured within healthcare. The Fellowship will also explore the impact of the Canadian ‘Handbook on Sensitive Practice for Health Care Practitioners’, working with the handbook authors and Linn Haag at Wilfrid Laurier University to understand how sensitive and compassionate care approaches have been translated into practice. Together, these collaborations will provide a unique opportunity to explore how compassionate care principles can be operationalised within cervical screening systems and adapted to strengthen prevention-focused health and social care in the UK.
Talking about the award, Dr Ceryl Davies said: “I am absolutely delighted to have been awarded a Churchill Fellowship. This Fellowship provides an incredible opportunity to learn from international leaders and communities who are developing more compassionate and accessible approaches to cervical screening.
I hope the learning will help strengthen prevention-focused approaches within the UK and support services to become safer and more accessible for women who currently struggle to engage with screening. Ultimately, this is about reducing avoidable harm and ensuring preventative healthcare works for all women.”
Alongside Dr Ceryl Davies, this year’s Fellows will explore a wide range of pressing social, health, environmental, and community issues across the globe. The Churchill Fellowship funds UK citizens to spend four to eight weeks building international networks, exchanging knowledge, and bringing practical learning back to benefit communities and services across the UK.
Julia Weston, Chief Executive of the Churchill Fellowship, said: “In a world where looking outwards has never mattered more, there is something genuinely hopeful about people choosing to seek out new ideas, build connections across borders, and use that knowledge to create positive change.
I am delighted to welcome our 2026 Fellows. Each of them shows the power of curiosity, openness, and a willingness to learn from others. We’re all looking forward to following their journeys and seeing the difference they make across the UK.”
The 2026 Churchill Fellows join a community of more than 4,000 changemakers working across some of today’s most important issues, from health and social care to climate, education, justice, and community development.
Applications for the next round of Churchill Fellowships will open from 1 September to 20 October 2026.
