A medical sociologist, Helen Roberts was educated at the Universities of Reading, Aix-Marseille and Sussex. She set up and ran the Child Health Research and Policy Unit at City University London, and prior to that, spent a decade in the third sector as Head of R&D with the children’s charity Barnardo’s. In 2009, she was made an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health at UCL. She is a non-executive director of NICE.

Internationally, from 2001-2010, Professor Roberts was on the Health Advisory Council, and then the Science Advisory Council with the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research in Canada. She is an editor with the Cochrane Public Health Review Group, and she sits on the International Advisory Committee of the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St Michael's Hospital, Toronto.