Dr Charlotte Elder

Dr Charlotte Elder received her undergraduate medical degree from Imperial College, (University of London) UK in 1999 and, after initially training as a general practitioner, she moved from London to Sheffield in 2005 in pursuit of excellent paediatric endocrinology training, combined with affordable housing and fabulous local countryside. Dr Elder completed her paediatric and specialist endocrinology and diabetes training in 2017 and took up her consultant post at Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust (SCFT). She provides a general endocrinology service, but her specialist clinical interests include steroid induced adrenal insufficiency (failure of the adrenal glands to produce adequate levels of the stress hormone cortisol) and Paediatric and Adolescent Gynaecology.

Dr Elder is a clinical academic, appointed as a Senior Clinical Lecturer in Paediatric Endocrinology at the University of Sheffield (UoS) in 2018. She studied for her PhD at the UoS (awarded 2015), continued her research as an NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer (2015-2018) and was later supported by an MRC funded UKRI Biomedical Science Innovation Scholarship (2021-2024). Her primary research area is developing non-invasive ways to assess adrenal function, for which she has received £3m in funding, including support from Sheffield Children’s Hospital Charity. With colleagues she has developed a non-invasive test of adrenal gland function (the Nasacthin Test), a home-waking salivary cortisone screening test and her research group are conducting studies looking to define adrenal function in premature babies (https://sheffield.ac.uk/smph/people/academic/clinical-medicine/charlotte-elder). Dr Elder won the Trust’s star award for excellence in research and innovation in 2023 and was highly commended in 2025.

Dr Elder also has a keen education interest. She has previously been Director of Undergraduate Medical Education at SCFT, module lead on the paediatric endocrinology MSc module at University of Sheffield, and is currently co-director of studies for the 3rd year at Sheffield’s medical school. She has been the University of Sheffield’s Partner Governor on the Trusts Council of Governors since 2018.