About
Sally Sheard is a health policy analyst and historian with a research focus in the interface between expert advisers and policymakers. She is Executive Dean of the Institute of Population Health at the University of Liverpool where she also holds the Andrew Geddes and John Rankin Chair of Modern History.
Sally has authored books and articles on the political economy of health and social welfare, the development of the NHS and the medical civil service, especially the role of the Chief Medical Officer (CMO). In 2013 she published the first biography of Brian Abel-Smith - The Passionate Economist: how Brian Abel-Smith shaped global health and social welfare (Bristol, 2013). her recent studies have focused on waiting lists, the relationship between hospital acquired infections and length of stay, the policy dynamics of Covid-19, the development of genetics and genomics policy in the UK and the contemporary history of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). Sally was a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator (2015-2023), leading the project 'The Governance of Health: medical, economic and managerial expertise in British health policy since 1948'.
Sally has extensive experience of using history in public and policy engagement, and serves as a senior associate for the History and Policy organisation. She works with health authorities and government organisations providing historical context for contemporary health policy issues. She has written for and appeared in television and radio programmes, including Health Before the NHS, A House Through Time, Who Do You Think You Are?, How the Victorians Built Britain, and Woman's Hour. In 2018, to mark the seventieth anniversary of the NHS, she was commissioned to write and present the twenty part BBC Radio 4 series [National Health Stories] (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b7mxnq)
Prizes or Honours
- Visiting Scholar (2015)
- Visiting Senior Fellow (2009)