Dr Mike Rayner

Role: Chair

Mike Rayner is Director of the British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group which is based within the Department of Public Health of...more the University of Oxford and which he founded in 1993. The Group carries out research in two areas: firstly the burden of cardiovascular disease (in particular it is responsible for the British Heart Foundation’s series of Coronary Heart Diseases statistics publications and web-pages) and secondly into population based-approaches to the prevention of cardiovascular disease. Mike’s particular research interests are in food labelling, food marketing, food taxes and the relationship and the relationship between a healthy diet and a sustainable diet.

Mike is also Vice Chair of Sustain and Chair of the Children’s Food Campaign in the UK. He is a trustee of the UK National Heart Forum, a member of the Public Health Interventions Advisory Committee of NICE (the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence for the UK), Chair of the Nutrition Expert Group for the European Heart Network based in Brussels and a member of the Scientific Advisory Panel of the International Obesity Task Force. He is also an ordained priest in the Church of England.

close

Dr Kremlin Wickramasinghe

Role: Director

Dr. Kremlin Wickramasinghe is a researcher in the British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group, Department of Public Health,...more University of Oxford and also a DPhil Candidate in Public Health. He works on the Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology project. Kremlin graduated in 2006 with a degree in Bachelor of Medicine Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. He completed his Masters in Global Health Science in 2009 from the University of Oxford. Kremlin completed his internship at the World Health Organization Head Quarters in Geneva on the Social Determinants of Health and cardiovascular diseases project.

He is the chair of the Early Career Network (ECN) of the Asia Pacific Academic Consortium for Public Health and serves as an international editorial board member of the Asia Pacific Journal of Public Health. He is a collaborator and a member of the international teaching faculty for the US NIH Millennium Promise Award for "Asian Collaboration for Excellence in Non-Communicable Disease" and Fogarty Framework for Global Health Projects. He is the Course-Director of the "Short course on NCD prevention strategies" offered by the University of Oxford.

close

Dr Steven Allender

Role: Speaker

Dr Steven Allender currently holds a joint appointment as Associate Professor and Deputy Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating...more Centre for Obesity Prevention at Deakin University and as a Senior Researcher in the Department of Public Health at the University of Oxford.

The WHO CC is the only one of the more than 900 WHO Collaborating Centres to focus on obesity prevention. Within the WHO CC Steve is the Director of the CO-OPS Collaboration, which was funded in 2007 under the Federal Government’s Learning for Successful Community Initiatives, and since that time has built a strong and significant national network of practitioners and researchers in community-based obesity prevention. This active and dynamic network of over 1,000 practitioners promotes best practice in community based obesity prevention and enables dissemination and sharing of lessons learnt in practice. The CO-OPS Collaboration is conducted in partnership between the three leading Australian universities in this area – Deakin University, University of Sydney, and University of Melbourne. See www.co-ops.net.au

Dr Allender has held the post of Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Public Health at the University of Oxford since 2002. In this post Steve was the lead researcher for the Coronary heart disease statistics project at the University of Oxford. Steve also led the www.heartstats.org project, holds an Honorary Member of the Faculty of Public Health, UK Royal College of Physicians and was a founding fellow of the Unit for Bio Cultural Variation and Obesity at the University of Oxford.

Steve has an ongoing programme of research on the burden of disease and obesity prevention. Recent work has seen a particular interest in the emerging burden of chronic disease in developing countries and the possibilities for using complex systems methodologies in community based interventions.

close

Prof Adrian Bauman

Role: Speaker

Sesquicentenary Professor of Public Health,
School of Public Health, University of Sydney, Australia.

Adrian Bauman is...more an epidemiologist, public health physician, and director of around 20 researchers in the Prevention Research Collaboration, at The University of Sydney, Australia. This is a research group with public health research and policy interests in obesity prevention, physical activity and public health nutrition. His research interests include the epidemiology and public health aspects of physical activity, inactivity and sitting time. He has worked on NCD prevention in many countries and as a consultant for the World Health Organisation. He is well published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature in NCD prevention, and in physical activity research, and has attracted around $15 Million in research grants since 2000.

close

Prachi Bhatnagar

Role: Speaker

Prachi Bhatnagar is a researcher in the British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group at the University of Oxford, and is also studying...more for a DPhil in Public Health with the same group. In her role as a researcher Prachi works on cardiovascular disease epidemiology; for her DPhil she is exploring how ethnicity affects diet and exercise choices in the context of people's local environments. Prachi graduated in 2006 with a degree in Biological Anthropology from the University of Cambridge, and graduated with a Masters in Public Health from Imperial College London in 2008.

close

Dr Francesco Branca

Role: Speaker

Francesco Branca is the Director of the Department of Nutrition for Health and Development at the World Health Organization, Geneva. He graduated...more in Medicine and Surgery and specialized in Diabetology and Metabolic Diseases at the Universita' Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Roma and obtained a PhD in Nutrition at Aberdeen University.

Previously, he was president of the Federation of the European Nutrition Societies and a senior scientist at the Italian Food and Nutrition Research Institute where he was responsible for the design and implementation of several studies on the effects of food and nutrients on human health at the different stages of the life cycle and for the design, management and evaluation of public health nutrition programmes.

close

Dr Sudeep Chand

Role: Speaker

Dr Sudeep Chand is currently Research Fellow at the Centre on Global Health Security at Chatham House in London. Prior to this, Sudeep was Global...more Health Adviser at the Department of Health in England. He has worked as a public health adviser at the World Health Organization in Geneva, and consultant to DFID and Save the Children on health system reconstruction in Nigeria.

He is a medical doctor, having graduated from Imperial College London with an intercalated degree in management from the Tanaka Business School. Sudeep trained in psychiatry, and later public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Subsequent roles include health and science reporter for the BBC and deputy director of public health for local government. He has sat on a range of government and academic advisory committees. and was honorary research fellow at the UCL Institute of Global Health. His published research covers a range of issues in health system strengthening and international relations, most recently the economic role of non-communicable diseases.

close

Gill Cowburn

Role: Speaker

Gill Cowburn is a Registered Public Health Nutritionist with an interest in research and policy aspects of health promotion and nutrition. She has...more a particular interest in structural and environmental influences on dietary behaviour and in the prevention of overweight and obesity.

She joined the British Heart Foundation Research Group in January 1998, following an early career as a community dietitian and working in health promotion. Since joining the Group, Gill has completed several systematic reviews, evaluation projects and studies, including working with the European Heart Network on the ‘Children, obesity and associated avoidable chronic diseases’ project examining the commercial marketing to children of foods high in fat, salt and sugar and the EuroHeart project which aimed to provide a picture of heart health strategies across 16 countries in Europe.

Most recently, Gill has completed a study of magazines for children and young people to examine the extent and type of food advertising and links to internet food marketing and also research assessing the options for Local Authorities to use the regulatory environment to prevent obesity. Gill is currently working on understanding how the local environment influences food purchasing behaviour, specifically relating to food purchases made by teenagers on their journey to and from school.

close

Dr Charlie Foster

Role: Speaker

Charlie joined the British Heart Foundation Research Group in October 1998 after working in health promotion for five years. He has extensive...more experience of lecturing, teaching and training principles and methods of evaluation, health behaviour change and health promotion.

He leads two British Heart Foundation funded programmes of research on physical activity and obesity. The aim of both programmes is to improve the quality of the evidence base for basic epidemiology, measurement, correlates, interventions and policy. He has published over ninety academic papers, reviews and reports. He is developing research into new technologies to understand and change behaviours, supported by Microsoft and the British Heart Foundation.

Charlie has also been the Director of the Centre for Public Health Evidence for Physical Activity for NICE, with Loughborough University. Recent research publications include the BMJ, Cochrane Collaboration and Preventive Medicine. Charlie was a co-author the new UK CMO guidelines, published in 2011, Start Active, Stay Active: A report on physical activity from the four home countries. He is the currently the Vice Chair of the WHO HEPA Europe Network (European network for the promotion of health-enhancing physical activity) and member of advisory boards to the Government and the WHO. He has an excellent reputation as an international conference speaker, lecturer and teacher and is a faculty member of the prestigious Physical activity and Public Health, run by Centre for Disease Control (Atlanta) & University of South Carolina. Charlie holds honorary academic posts at the Institutes of Human Sciences at the University of Oxford and University of Durham. He is an Adjunct professor at the University of Canberra and an Associate Researcher at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

close

Prof Sharon Friel

Role: Speaker

Sharon Friel, Professor of Health Equity at the Australian National University, has been a public health academic since 1992. Between 2005 and...more 2008 she was the Head of the Scientific Secretariat (University College London) for the World Health Organisation’s Commission on Social Determinants of Health. In 2010 she was awarded an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship to investigate the interface between health equity, social determinants and climate change, based at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, The Australian National University (ANU). Before moving to Australia, she worked for many years in the Department of Health Promotion, National University of Ireland, Galway.

Prof Friel is interested in complex systems and how they affect health inequities. Her research is policy focussed and in areas of health inequities, social determinants of health; global health equity; climate change and health equity; food systems and policy; non-communicable disease prevention, and urbanisation and health equity.

She is co-founder and chair of the Global Action for Health Equity Network (HealthGAEN), a global alliance concerned with research, training, policy and advocacy related to action in the social and environmental determinants of health equity, and currently leads the Asia Pacific Review of Action in the Social and Environmental Determinants of Health Inequities. She is chief investigator in the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council three- year study of “Climate Change and Rural Communities: Integrated study of physical and social impacts, health risks and adaptive options”, and the five-year CSIRO Australia climate change flagship research program “Climate, cities and human health – impacts, vulnerability and adaptation”.

close

Dr Gauden Galea

Role: Speaker

Dr Gauden Galea is Director of Non-communicable Diseases and Health Promotion. He is a public health physician working with the World Health...more Organization since 1998, with experience in the Western Pacific, in WHO Headquarters, and most recently, in the European Region. He has a special interest in the social determinants of NCDs and in the links between noncommunicable diseases and the development agenda.

close

Prof Mike Kelly

Role: Speaker

Professor Mike Kelly is Director of the Centre of Public Health Excellence at National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) where...more he leads on the development of public health guidance. He is a public health practitioner, researcher and academic.

He originally graduated in Social Science from the University of York, holds a Masters degree in Sociology from the University of Leicester, and undertook his PhD in the Department of Psychiatry in the University of Dundee. Before joining NICE he was Director of Evidence and Guidance at the Health Development Agency. Professor Kelly has previously held academic posts at the Universities of Leicester, Dundee, Glasgow, Greenwich and Abertay. He is Honorary Senior Visiting Fellow in the General Practice and Primary Care Research Unit, Institute of Public Health, University of Cambridge, Honorary Professor in the Department of Public Health and Policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Honorary Professor in Community Based Medicine, in the Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences, the University of Manchester, Visiting Professor in the School of Health and Related Research, University of Sheffield, Honorary Professor of Public Health, University of Salfordand Honorary Visiting Professor in the Department of Public Health, Primary Care and Food Policy in the School of Community and Health Sciences, City University, London. He is a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.

He has published more than two hundred papers in medical, social scientific and public health journals and is author/ editor of seven books. In 2010 he was awarded the Alwyn Smith Prize of the Faculty of Public Health for his work on cardiovascular disease and alcohol misuse prevention.

close

Prof David Matthews

Role: Speaker

David Matthews is currently Professor of Diabetes Medicine, University of Oxford, and is Medical Tutor and Vice Principal at Harris Manchester...more College, Oxford. He is the emeritus founding chairman of the Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism.

His academic research interests include mathematical modelling of insulin resistance, homeostatic model assessment of beta-cell function and insulin resistance, ketones, and therapeutic agents in type 2 diabetes. An emerging and vital concern has been the global obesity epidemic – and the pandemic of diabetes. He was a founding trustee of the Oxford Health Alliance – campaigning and researching on chronic disease. He is currently the Director of the Global Alliance for Chronic Disease; a world-wide association of six research councils collaborating in the fight against Chronic Disease. He is Co-Director of the UK Diabetes Research Network. He has authored more than 230 publications and is on the editorial boards of several professional journals.

Recently he has set up a web site of diabetes experiences which is www.diabetes-stories.com. His interest in epidemic chronic disease stems from the concern that we are facing a pandemic of diabetes found in both developing and developed countries. The web site www.oxha.org gives more details of this. The Banting Lecture at Diabetes UK in 2010 was given in recognition of this work.

David Matthews was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he was made Senior Scholar. He was an MRC scholar while studying for his DPhil and subsequently a Junior Research Fellow at Balliol College and the Joan and Richard Doll Senior Research Fellow at Green College.

close

Dr Karina McHardy

Role: Speaker

Dr Karina McHardy graduated from the University of Auckland's School of Medicine in 2005. Following two years of clinical practice in Auckland,...more New Zealand, she worked with the Medical Programme Directorate as a Clinical Medical Education Fellow. In 2008, she moved to the UK to undertake an MSc in Global Health at the University of Oxford. Whilst pursuing the MSc, she also completed an internship with the WHO Regional Office for Europe in Copenhagen.

Dr McHardy is currently a Clarendon, Wolfson and Department of Public Health Scholar and is completing a doctorate through Oxford's Department of Public Health. Her research focuses on childhood obesity and international public health surveillance systems. Dr McHardy is also an honourary clinical lecturer at Auckland's Department of Medicine and works as a Global Health and Health Promotion Tutor at Oxford.

close

Dr Shanti Mendis MBBS MD FRCP FACC

Role: Speaker

Dr Mendis has more than 15 years experience in global health and coordinates the Chronic Disease Prevention and Management unit at the World...more Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland where she is also the Senior Adviser for Cardiovascular Diseases. She was Professor of Medicine, at the Faculty of Medicine and Consultant Physician at the Teaching Hospital, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka at the time of being recruited to WHO as a consultant in 1998. She graduated in Medicine from the University of Sri Lanka with first Class Honours and practiced medicine in England and Scotland for 6 years and obtained her postgraduate qualifications from the UK and post doctoral training in research and cardiology in USA. She has wide experience in implementation research, clinical medicine, undergraduate and post graduate training and global public health.

close

Dr Melanie Nichols

Role: Speaker

Melanie is a researcher in the British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group at the University of Oxford. Her current research examines...more the burden of cardiovascular disease across Europe, including associated risk factors and trends over time. Melanie also holds a fractional appointment with Deakin University in Australia, in the WHO Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention. Her previous work has focussed on early childhood obesity and the evaluation of complex community-based interventions.

close

Prof Brian Oldenburg

Role: Speaker

Brian Oldenburg (PhD) is Professor of International Public Health and Associate Dean (Global Health and International Campuses) at Monash...more University in Australia. His research program focuses on health policy, global health and the primary and secondary prevention of chronic conditions, such as diabetes and their associated social and behavioural risk factors across the life-course. He has conducted research, teaching and consultancies in countries throughout the regions of Asia, the Pacific and more recently, Africa.

close

Prof K. Srinath Reddy

Role: Speaker

Prof. K. Srinath Reddy is presently President, Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) and formerly headed the Department of Cardiology at All...more India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). He was appointed as the First Bernard Lown Visiting Professor of Cardiovascular Health at the Harvard School of Public Health in 2009 and is also an Adjunct Professor of the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University. PHFI is engaged in capacity building in Public Health in India through education, training, research, policy development, health communication and advocacy.

Having trained in cardiology and epidemiology, Prof. Reddy has been involved in several major international and national research studies including the INTERSALT global study of blood pressure and electrolytes, INTERHEART global study on risk factors of myocardial infarction, national collaborative studies on epidemiology of coronary heart disease and community control of rheumatic heart disease. Widely regarded as a leader of preventive cardiology at national and international levels, Prof. Reddy has been a researcher, teacher, policy enabler, advocate and activist who has worked to promote cardiovascular health, tobacco control, chronic disease prevention and healthy living across the lifespan. He edited the National Medical Journal of India for 10 years and is on editorial board of several international and national journals. He has more than 300 scientific publications in international and Indian peer reviewed-journals.

He has served on many WHO expert panels and chairs the Foundations Advisory Board of the World Heart Federation. He is a member of World Economic Forum’s Global Health Board. He also chairs the Core Advisory Group on Health and Human Rights for the National Human Rights Commission of India. He is a member of the National Science and Engineering Research Board of Government of India. He is presently chairing the High Level Expert Group on Universal Health Coverage, set up by the Planning Commission of India. He also serves as the President, of the National Board of Examinations which deals with post-graduate medical education in India.

His contributions to public health have been recognized through several awards and honours. They include: WHO Director General’s Award for Outstanding Global Leadership in Tobacco Control (World Health Assembly, 2003), Padma Bhushan (Presidential Honour, India, 2005), Queen Elizabeth Medal (Royal Society for Health Promotion, UK, 2005), Luther Terry Medal for Leadership in Tobacco Control (American Cancer Society, 2009), Membership of the US National Academies (Institute of Medicine, 2005), Fellowship of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (2009), Fellowship of the Faculty of Public Health, UK (2009), Cutter Lecture (Harvard, 2006), Koplan Lecture (CDC, 2008), Gopalan Oration (2009), Ramalingaswami Oration (2010) and Paul Dudley White Lecture (AHA, 2010), Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa) by University of Aberdeen, Scotland (2011) and Dr. NTR Medical University (2o11).

close

Mr Justin Richards

Role: Speaker

DPhil Student and Researcher

Justin joined the BHFHPRG at the University of Oxford in January 2009 and is reading for a DPhil in Public...more Health. His work focuses on the physical and mental health outcomes of humanitarian programs that harness sport as a vehicle for development in low- and middle-income countries. Justin is particularly interested in post-conflict populations and is conducting his fieldwork in northern Uganda. He is currently funded by Clarendon, University College and Oxford-Australia scholarships.

His academic background comprises a Bachelor in Physiotherapy (Hons) at the University of Melbourne with subsequent ongoing clinical practice in a variety of settings. In 2007 he completed an MSc in Science and Medicine of Athletic Performance at the University of Oxford. He has since enjoyed internship opportunities as part of the Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health at the WHO in Geneva and the Physical Education and Sport Section of UNESCO in Paris. Justin is also a founding editor of the Journal of Sport for Development.

close

Dr Harry Rutter

Role: Speaker

Harry Rutter is a public health physician based in Oxford, England. He is an honorary senior clinical lecturer at the University of Oxford, an...more adjunct professor of public health at University College Cork, and was the founder director of the National Obesity Observatory for England. He chairs the Programme Development Group (PDG) for guidance on measures to promote walking and cycling for the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), led the development of the National Child Measurement Programme childhood obesity surveillance system, is a member of the Department of Health Expert Panel on obesity and of the current NICE PDG on preventing obesity, and sat on the management group of the Foresight Obesities project.

Harry is a founder member of the steering committee of the European Health Enhancing Physical Activity network; sits on the WHO Cycling and Walking Health Economic Appraisal Toolkit steering group; and jointly led work packages on two recent EU-funded projects on obesity and physical activity. He has a broad interest in the relationships between all aspects of transport, sustainability, built environment and health, in particular the health impacts of walking and cycling. He is also increasingly interested in the evaluation of public health outcomes within complex systems, and the development of tools to support evidence-based public health policy.

close

Dr Pete Scarborough

Role: Speaker

Dr Pete Scarborough is a senior researcher in the British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group at Oxford University. His research...more fields include the primary prevention of chronic disease through improved nutrition, and the associations between public health and environmental sustainability. Previous work includes investigations of the impact of taxes and subsidies on diet and nutrition; the impact of front-of-pack food labelling; development of a nutrient profile model to regulate broadcast advertising of foods during children's television in the UK; and estimating the health impact of achieving diets with low greenhouse gas emissions. Much of Dr Scarborough's work involves modelling, and he is the lead researcher on a project developing an integrated model of the impact on chronic disease of simultaneous population-level changes in diet, physical activity, smoking and alcohol consumption. He is also a course convenor for an MSc module on health, environment and development.

close

Dr William Summerskill

Role: Speaker

Senior Executive Editor: The Lancet

Bill Summerskill is a senior executive editor at The Lancet, where he is active...more in all aspects of the journal and has responsibility for the research content. His clinical background is in primary care, during which time he was affiliated with Bristol University. Bill is a senior fellow of the Centre for Evidence-based Medicine at Oxford University, and is involved with various groups to improve the quality of research design, reporting, and relevance to developing countries; as well improving the translation of findings into practice.

close

Dr Nick Townsend

Role: Speaker

Nick is a senior researcher in the British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group at Oxford University, where he is the lead on a...more programme of research into the epidemiology of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and associated risk factors in the United Kingdom. This programme of research includes modelling the future burden of CVD, investigations into regional, social, ethnic and temporal trends in CVD and improving estimates of the incidence and other aspects of the burden of CVD. As a part of this programme Nick collaborates with other members of the BHFHPRG on projects studying the promotion of healthy dietary choice and physical activity from a public health perspective, with a particular interest in health promotion in schools. His research has included studying the promotion of healthy eating in secondary schools through a whole school approach, an evaluation of the health promoting schools concept, and analysis of the National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP), a school based BMI surveillance programme. He has also developed a programme of research into childhood obesity in collaboration with the National Obesity Observatory (NOO) of which he is a member.

close