About
I am a historian of health and medicine in Britain since 1800. My current research investigates what influences British health policy, with a focus on the uses of science in policy making. Since 2017 I have been based at the University of Liverpool in the Department of Public Health Policy and Systems (part of the Institute of Population Health), where I work mainly in the Governance of Health project. I previously spent twenty years in the British civil service and the European Commission, working mainly on public health and on health system (re)organisation. My PhD in History was awarded by the University of Leeds in 2010 for a thesis on the decline in working-class fertility in late nineteenth-century Britain.
My recent work has examined British health services research since 1988 and the development of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). My work led to a Universities UK health research policy seminar in 2018 on the relevance of history to future policy directions: it has also contributed to Nuffield Trust research for NHS England. The NICE research will lead to a Routledge book (with Professor Sally Sheard) in 2024.
I work on policy impact for the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit on Emerging and Zoonotic Infections, based in Liverpool’s Institute of Infection, Veterinary & Ecological Sciences. From 2020-21 I was a Co-Investigator on the UKRI/NIHR-funded project ‘Understanding the dynamics of policy development and healthcare worker behaviour in the UK during the Covid-19 public health emergency’, leading on two significant publications, and on submissions to Inquiries by Parliamentary Select Committees. Other research interests include the history of global policy responses to antimicrobial resistance (in humans, animals and the environment). I help supervise a PhD on the history of pandemics, teach undergraduate medical students on health policy, financing and the use of evidence, and lead a module on Health Policy, Governance and Economics in Liverpool’s prestigious Masters of Public Health programme.