Honorary Visiting Fellow, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge

Senior Clinical Lecturer in Health Equity, Queen Mary University London

Honorary Public Health Consultant, NHS England

John is an Honorary Visiting Fellow in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge, a Senior Clinical Lecturer in Health Equity at Queen Mary University London and an Honorary Public Health Consultant at NHS England. He believes that through our joint efforts we can build fair, inclusive and equitable societies. He works at the interface between research and practice to promote social justice and address health inequalities.

John’s main research interest is interventions and policies that seek to promote health equity and reduce health inequalities. He has range of interests relating to equitable health, including so called “intervention-generated inequalities” in health care settings, local system-level interventions to address inequalities, health care workforce inequalities, national policies and strategies to address inequalities and how primary care can address health and health care inequalities.

His PhD looked at how disadvantaged older people from rural areas access primary care using realist methods, structural equation modelling and a randomised feasibility trial. Other research projects include: an analysis of the Global Burden of Disease, which has been published in the Lancet, and a feasibility trial of goal setting in primary care for patients with multi-morbidity. While working in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Clinical Commissioning Group he led the development of a health inequalities strategy which can be found here.

John’s medical school training was at the University of Aberdeen, graduating in 2007. Following this he completed his foundation medical training in hospitals in the north east of Scotland. John then spent a year in Auckland, NZ, working as a junior doctor in medicine for the elderly and surgery. On returning to the UK, he worked in the Evidence Review Group at the University of Aberdeen appraising the clinical and cost effectiveness of new medications for NICE. During this period, John spent three months at the Liverpool School of Topical Medicine undertaking the Diploma of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. He also attained a distinction for his Master’s degree in public health and also won Division and College prizes for his thesis looking at vitamin D supplementation and heart disease.c

In 2012, John began an Academic Clinical Fellowship in Public Health at the University of East Anglia and Norfolk County Council. He was successful in applying for a NIHR Doctoral Research Fellowship looking at how disadvantaged older people access primary care. His research informed an NHS toolkit and animation about improving access to primary care for vulnerable groups and based on this he won two prizes for research impact.