Meet Doireann

Doireann Peelo came to us from Maynooth University where she completed her undergrad in Product Design (Marketing and Innovation). In 2020 she won an RSA design award for a period poverty management system for homeless women.

In UL, her focus shifted to cervical cancer and HPV. Her Masters research took a deep dive into the opinions, beliefs and attitudes of women in Ireland towards both HPV and cervical cancer. Her final design response is a product-service-system – NALA – which she envisions would allow users to self-test for HPV at home via sampling from menstrual blood. Read more about Doireann's research here.

Some of the issues uncovered through Doireann’s research were needs for: a) user-friendly self-screening; b) addressing sexual health stigma; c) equitable access to vaccination and information, and d) improving uptake of cervical screening and the treatment procedure.

Finding that low literacy levels are often a barrier to engagement with the health service, Doireann’s product NALA has been designed to have very little written text and the instructions are graphic representations with an informative video accessory.

Doireann is about to begin a PhD under the supervision of Dr Kellie Morrissey.