The Scientific Advisory Board is a core part of the governance framework for the Unit, providing advice and a means for scientific accountability, in parallel with the central accountability to the Department of Health and Social Care.
Purpose of the advisory board
The Scientific Advisory Board provides advice and guidance on scientific aspects of the Unit’s research and future focus. The function of the Group is to review and advise the management team on the scientific direction of the unit, working alongside the Director.
Specifically, the Group will:
- Provide expert advice on topics raised by the Unit’s management team
- Discuss and advise on the strategic direction and development of the unit
- Consider requests for changes to the direction of the unit and provide advice where required
- Review the Unit’s work and provide external scrutiny of its quality
- Provide advice and expertise on wider related research initiatives in order to maximise opportunities for wider collaboration in key areas
Chair
Linda Bauld – Bruce and John Usher Professor of Public Health, The University of Edinburgh
Linda joined the University of Edinburgh in November 2018 from the University of Stirling where she was Professor of Health Policy, Director of the Institute for Social Marketing and Dean of Research Impact. Since 2014 she has combined her academic roles with serving as Cancer Research UK’s cancer prevention champion, the CRUK/BUPA Chair in Behavioural Research for Cancer Prevention.
Professor Bauld is a behavioural scientist with a PhD in social policy. Her research focuses on two main areas: the evaluation of complex public health interventions; and the use of evidence to inform health policy. She has conducted studies on drug and alcohol use, inequalities in health, overweight and obesity and, most notably, on smoking cessation and tobacco control. She undertook the first study of the UK’s national stop smoking services when they were established in 1998. She has also played a significant role in the monitoring and evaluation of a range of tobacco control policies, and served as the UK government’s scientific adviser on tobacco control from 2006 to 2010.
Linda chairs, or is a member of, a number of policy and research funding committees in Europe, Canada and the UK. Her work with the media is extensive, and a particular current focus is contributing to ongoing debates on electronic cigarettes and measures to address the price and promotion of HFSS foods. In 2017 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh for her contribution to cancer prevention and public health.
Board Members
Susan Jebb – Professor of Diet and Population Health, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford
Susan is a nutrition scientist and her research interests are focused on how what we eat affects the risk of gaining weight or becoming obese and the interventions that might be effective to help people lose weight or reduce the risk of obesity-related diseases. She has also conducted a series of randomised controlled trials to study the impact of dietary changes on the risk factors for cardiovascular disease.
In general, this work highlights that body weight is a more important risk factor for ill-health than differences in the nutritional composition of the diet. Susan has strong scientific collaborations with the Behaviour and Health Research unit at the University of Cambridge and the MRC Human Nutrition Research unit, where I was a Programme Leader for many years.
She is also very interested in how scientific evidence on diet is translated into policy and practice, by government, industry, the public health community and the media and was the science advisor for the Foresight obesity report and subsequently chaired the cross-government Expert Advisory Group on obesity and the Responsibility Deal Food Network. Susan is now a member of the Public Health England Obesity Programme Board and one of the Chairs of the NICE Public Health Advisory Committees. I am actively involved in a number of events and media projects to engage the public in issues relating to diet and health. In 2008 Susan was awarded an OBE for services to public health.
Paul Aveyard – Professor of Behaviour Medicine, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences
Paul’s research focuses on behavioural medicine. This is the integration of biological, psychological and sociological knowledge to prevent and treat disease and to aid rehabilitation.
His work focuses on helping people change their behaviour, either to prevent serious disease, or as a treatment for that disease. Paul’s work has examined interventions to help people stop or reduce their smoking and lately he has worked in helping people manage their weight if they have become obese.
He has worked with several other organisations to improve health and healthcare. Paul is former president of the UK Society of Behavioural Medicine, a former trustee of the Association for the Study of Obesity, a member of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco and is a senior editor of the journal Addiction and coordinating editor of the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group.
He has worked on several NICE working groups and advised the Department of Health on smoking and obesity.
Judith Green – Professor of Sociology of Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Judith is a medical sociologist, with degrees in anthropology and medical sociology. Before joining LSHTM in 1996 Susan held posts at South Bank University, the Department of General Practice and Primary Care at UMDS (Guy’s), where she completed a PhD on the sociology of accidents, and the Department of General Practice at King’s College School of Medicine. She currently co-edits Critical Public Health, an international peer-reviewed journal which publishes a broad range of critical research and commentary on and for public health. Judith is currently based at King’s College London, School of Population Health & Environmental Sciences, where she co-directs the Social Sciences & Urban Public Health Institute and has an honorary appointment at LSHTM.
Marie Johnston – Professor Emeritus of Health Psychology, University of Aberdeen
Marie is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Academy of Learned Societies for the Social Sciences the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and Honorary Fellow of the British Psychological Society, European Health Psychology Society and the Health Psychology and Public Health Network.
Marie conducts research on behaviour change in health and healthcare contexts and on disability (theory, measurement and intervention).
In 1986, she became the first chair of the Health Psychology section of the BPS and in 1992, the second president of the European Health Psychology Society. She has served on numerous BPS committees and in 1994 gained the BPS President’s Award.
Her previous posts were at the University of St Andrews, London University (Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine) and Oxford University, having completed her BSc at the University of Aberdeen and PhD at the University of Hull.
Jim McManus – Director of Public Health for Hertfordshire County Council
Jim is Director of Public Health for Hertfordshire a CCG Board Member and Deputy Chair of the National Institute of Health Research Public Health Programme Advisory Board. He is a Health Foundation Generation Q Quality Improvement Fellow, Hon Professor at the University of Hertfordshire and Visiting Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics.
Jim has experience in service commissioning and quality improvement in end of life care. A Chartered Psychologist, Jim has worked on organisational quality, equality and diversity issues for over twenty years, having previously held appointments from the Lord Chancellor advising the judiciary of England and Wales on diversity and equality, produced guidelines for NHS Trusts on religious equality and guidance and toolkits for the Home Office and Department of Communities and Local Government.
In 2011 Jim was awarded the Good Samaritan Medal for Healthcare Excellence by Pope Benedict XVI, the highest honour for healthcare the Holy See can award. Previous recipients include Sir Alexander Fleming.
Jeremy Grimshaw – Senior Scientist, University of Ottawa
Jeremy received an MBChB (MD equivalent) from the University of Edinburgh, UK. He trained as a family physician prior to undertaking a PhD in health services research at the University of Aberdeen, before moving to Canada in 2002. His research focuses on the evaluation of interventions to disseminate and implement evidence-based practice. Dr Grimshaw is a Senior Scientist, Clinical Epidemiology Program, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, a Full Professor in the Department of Medicine, University of Ottawa and a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Health Knowledge Transfer and Uptake. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal College of Edinburgh. Jim has been awarded the CIHR Knowledge Translation award twice and is the 2018 CIHR Barer-Flood career achievement award winner for Health Services and Policy Research. He has over 550 peer reviewed publications.
Rebecca Lawton – Professor, Psychology of Healthcare, University of Leeds
Rebecca is a health psychologist who conducts research in two main areas: patient safety and lifestyle behaviour change. Rebecca began her research career working with Professor James Reason at the University of Manchester where she investigated the role of human error, specifically procedural violations, in the context of railway accidents. Post-doctoral research posts included investigation of the predictors of road traffic accidents and risk perception in the context of the NHS.
Rebecca has received funding from the ESRC, DfT, DH, Bupa Foundation, NIHR and SHA to investigate human behaviour from a social cognitive and systems perspective.
Her work has involved close collaboration with surgeons, anaesthetists, midwives, nurses and GPs, as well as patient groups. Rebecca has acted as a consultant on a wide variety of projects in this field, including the design of error management systems for British Airways, Singapore Airlines and consultancy work as an accident investigator for Railtrack.
She teaches about psychological perspectives on patient safety at postgraduate level and supervises postgraduate students in this area.
Rebecca has published widely in the area of risk and safety as well as in the field of lifestyle behaviour change, where she has a specific interest in the influence of emotion on behaviour. Within the School of Psychology, Rebecca is lead for Impact, a role that involves working with colleagues to maximise the ‘good’ that research can do within society.
Jennifer Bostock – Independent PPI Representative
Jennifer is an Independent Ethics Lead for RDS London and also Chair of the Public Advisory Group and Decision Maker for the Enabling Involvement Fund.
Jennifer has been working in research ethics for over 10 years, is visiting lecturer teaching at KCL medical and dental schools. She was a founding member of the Marie Stopes Research Ethics Committee (REC). She is currently Vice Chair of an NHS REC and Deputy Chair of the Save the Children Research Evaluation Ethics Committee, which reviews international humanitarian aid research. Jennifer has been invited to sit on the newly formed HIS Research Committee as their Ethics Expert. She has been commissioned to lead on the Ethics Training for research staff across Save the Children UK and sit on the US Save REC.
She has sat on the following NIHR funding panels: RfPB; i4i; PGfAR; PHR & TCC Fellowship Interview Panel. She is currently a board member of the HS&DR and the Early Diagnosis Panel at Cancer Research UK & a member of the HealthCare Infection Society (HIS). She is a lay peer reviewer for the NIHR & the journal Health Expectations. She is a founding member of the Public Implementation Group at the Quality Outcomes Research Unit.
Her current research work includes being PPI co-lead on two DOH Policy Research Units (PIRU & QSO) and PPI advisor to ASCRU & a number of trials and grants funded by the NIHR. Jennifer Chairs a number of groups including the QMUL Polypharmacy Expert Advisory Group; & the Lay Panel for the UsPEX study at Oxford, the MRC GLoW study at Cambridge & Co-Chair of the NIHR School of Public Health (SPHR) PPI Evaluation study group. She is a member the SPHR International Advisory Board. She was the Public Involvement Lead for the Government’s evaluation of the Antimicrobial Resistance Strategy being led by the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene & a current James Lind Alliance Priority Partnership Setting exercise member & sits on the International Strategic Advisory Boards for the University of Cambridge (CEDAR & GDAR at the MRC).
Jennifer holds a number of Visiting Honorary posts at the following universities: KCL & the IOPPN; Oxford (Nuffield Department of Population Health); Cambridge (MRC); Kent (Personal Social Services Research Unit) & UCL. She is a public advisor and ethics consultant to Imperial College; Cardiff University & the LSE. She is co-researcher on the University of Kent’s MiCare study and the SPHR LSTMH Places & Communities project.