Course Director
Mike Rayner is Professor of Population Health at the Nuffield Department of Population Health and Director of the British Heart Foundation Centre on Population Approaches for Non-Communicable Disease Prevention.. The Centre, which Mike founded in 1993, is a World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre on Population Approaches for Non-Communicable Disease Prevention and carries out research in two main areas: the burden of cardiovascular disease and the promotion of healthier diets and increased levels of physical activity. ...more
Course co-ordinator
Jessica Renzella is a DPhil student in Population Health at the University of Oxford (Centre on Population Approaches for Non-Communicable Disease Prevention). Her research explores the collection and translation of nutrition, non-communicable disease, and urbanisation data in Sri Lanka. Jess was formerly the Strategic Development Coordinator at NCDFREE and, editor of PLOS Global Health Blogs. She lectures and tutors at the University of Oxford, and is Co-Chair of the WHO Research Connect Steering Group.
Speaker
Harry Rutter is professor of global public health at the University of Bath. He was the founder director of the English National Obesity Observatory; led the development of the English National Child Measurement Programme; chaired the UK NICE group on guidance on walking and cycling; was a member of the 2020 NHS England net zero carbon expert panel; co-chairs the SAGE Environmental and Modelling Group; is an adviser to WHO Euro and headquarters on physical activity, obesity, environment and health; and co-chairs the Lancet-Chatham House Commission on improving population health post COVID-19. His research is focused on effective, sustainable and equitable mechanisms for improving the research, policy and practice responses to complex systems problems in public health, with a particular focus on obesity, physical activity, built environment, and both communicable and non-communicable diseases.
Speaker
Nick joined the Department for Health at the University of Bath in 2018 as a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Public Health Epidemiology. His research focuses on the development and implementation of evidence based policy, with a particular focus on population level approaches to prevent non-communicable diseases (NCDs). This research covers the key areas of policy development and implementation, including the identification of health needs and appropriate policies or interventions, adaptation of policies or interventions to local contexts, implementation of policies or interventions and their scale-up and long-term sustainability. He is particularly interested in the wider/social determinants of health and multi-sectoral approaches to health promotion. Nick’s research has a global focus, with a particular interest in health in low and middle-income countries. He has worked with a number of intergovernmental organisations, national and international NGOs, academic institutions and policy makers including the WHO, the World Bank and the European Society of Cardiology.
Speaker
Pete's research focusses are population approached to improve nutrition and the relationship between public health and environmental sustainability. His nutrition research focuses on influences of food choice, including food price, food labelling, marketing of foods and food accessibility.
Pete leads a research programme that develops scenario models to estimate the population-level health impact of changes in the prevalence of behavioural risk factors. This has lead to the development of the Preventable Risk Integrated ModEl (PRIME), which has been used in several published analyses of the role of diet in health including estimates of the impact of health-related food taxation in the UK, Ireland and New Zealand; achieving dietary recommendations in the UK and Canada; and incorporating the cost of greenhouse gas emissions into food prices in the UK.
Pete has published several articles on the development and validation of nutrient profile models (models that classify foods on the basis of their nutritional composition), and was involved in the development of the nutrient profile model used by Ofcom to regulate the broadcast advertising of foods to children in the UK.
Pete has worked for the BHF Centre on Population Approaches for NCD Prevention in various capacities since 2003. He received a DPhil in public health in 2009 for a thesis investigating geographic variations in coronary heart disease rates in England. Pete studied mathematics at undergraduate level.
https://www.ndph.ox.ac.uk/team/peter-scarborough
Speaker
Prachi's research interests are in health inequities, intervention development and the social and environmental determinants of physical activity and diet. She has extensive experience in cardiovascular disease epidemiology, having published reviews and written numerous annual reports on the epidemiology of cardiovascular disease and its risk factors. Prachi has also worked as a Research Coordinator with NCDFREE, a global social movement aimed at using innovative and creative methods to raise awareness of NCDs among millennials.
Prachi completed her PhD at the University of Oxford in 2014, using the socio-ecological model to explore intergenerational differences in the physical activity of UK South Asians. She used both quantitative and qualitative techniques to explore how ethnic background influences physical activity in the context of the wider physical and social environment. Prachi's teaching commitments include teaching Health Promotion to Human Science undergraduates and Medical Students.
Prachi has a degree in Biological Anthropology from the University of Cambridge and a Masters in Public Health from Imperial College London. She joined the Centre on Population Approaches for NCD Prevention in 2008.
Speaker
Katie Dain is Chief Executive Officer of the NCD Alliance, a global network of civil society organisations dedicated to transforming the fight against non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Katie has worked with the NCD Alliance since its founding in 2009.
Katie is widely recognised as a leading advocate and expert on NCDs. She is currently a member of the WHO Independent High-Level Commission on NCDs, co-chair of the WHO Civil Society Working Group on the UN High-Level Meeting on NCDs, and a member of The Lancet Commission on NCDIs of the Poorest Billion.
Her experience covers a range of sustainable development issues, including global health, gender equality and women’s empowerment, violence against women, and women’s health. Before joining the NCD Alliance, she held a series of policy and advocacy posts in international NGOs and government, including the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) in Brussels, leading their global policy and advocacy programme; the UK Government as a gender policy adviser; Womankind Worldwide, a women’s rights organisation; and the Terrence Higgins Trust (THT), a HIV and sexual health charity.
She has a BA in History from Sheffield University, and a Master’s degree in Violence, Conflict and International Development from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London.
Speaker
I am a cardiologist and epidemiologist with expertise in clinical trials , prognosis research, systematic reviews, and implementation research. I trained in internal medicine and cardiology in Argentina and did a MSc and PhD in Epidemiology at the LSHTM where I am the Co-Director of the Centre for Global Chronic Conditions.
I am Editor of the Global Heart Journal and Editorial Advisor of the Cochrane Heart Group.
I divide my time between London and Geneva where I work as Senior Science Advisor for the World Heart Federation.
Speaker
I am an Associate Professor in Public Health in the Norwich Medical School and Public Health theme lead for the MBBS (medical) programme. In this role, I teach medical students about the importance and principles of public health, and particularly the primary prevention of chronic disease. My research area is physical activity and health, in which I aim to advance knowledge and understanding of ‘what works’ to get populations more active to reduce the burden of noncommunicable diseases. My interest in this field spans the measurement of physical activity, population level interventions, evaluation and policy research. I am President-elect of the International Society for Physical Activity and Health (ISPAH) and have acted as an advisor to a range of national and international health promotion agencies including the Australian Heart Foundation, the Department of Health in England, and the World Health Organization (Regional Offices for Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean and WHO Headquarters, Geneva). I was on the Strategic Advisory Network for the development of the WHO Global Action Plan on Physical Activity 2018 – 2030 and a member of the Guideline Development Group for the 2020 WHO physical activity and sedentary behaviour guidelines.
Speaker
Dr Ruitai Shao holds a medical degree in medical science and a master’s degree in social medicine & health management from Peking University, and a PhD in public health management from Fudan University. He has many years of experience as a senior public health specialist in China, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine, Deputy Director-General of the department for the prevention and control of both communicable and noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), and in public health strategies, policies and plans in the Ministry of Health. At the World Health Organization (WHO), he has been working on NCD prevention and control with focus on national NCD plans, polices and NCD research and innovation with focus on implementation research. He has worked with more than 30 countries on the development of their national multisectoral action plans for NCD prevention and control using the WHO NCD MSAP toolkit developed under his supervision. He is also working with countries to identify gaps, barriers and challenges using implementation research methods and strategies to address these issues. Prior to this, he coordinated the WHO global forum on NCD prevention and control and managed the integrated NCD prevention and control programme. He also coordinated a WHO study on the effectiveness of community-based programmes for integrated NCD prevention and control in several countries.
Speaker
Amandine Garde is a Professor of Law at the University of Liverpool. Her research interests lie in the fields of Consumer, Trade, European Union and Public Health Law. She has developed a specific expertise in the legal aspects of obesity prevention and other non-communicable diseases (NCD) risk factors. Her book EU Law and Obesity Prevention (Kluwer Law International, 2010) was the first to offer a critical analysis of the EU’s Obesity Prevention Strategy, and she is co-editor (with Alberto Alemanno) of Regulating Lifestyle Risks: the EU, Alcohol, Tobacco and Unhealthy Diets (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and (with Joshua Curtis and Olivier De Schutter) of Ending Childhood Obesity: A Challenge at the Crossroads of International Economic and Human Rights Law (Elgar, 2020). She is Senior Editor of the European Journal of Risk Regulation, and Editor of Elgar’s Health and the Law series. She is also a qualified solicitor.
In 2015, Amandine Garde established the Law & NCD Research Unit, which regularly advises international organisations, NGOs, public health agencies and governments worldwide. In particular, she has worked closely with the World Health Organization; she has written numerous policy reports, including the 2018 Unicef report A Child Rights-Based Approach to Food Marketing: A Guide for Policy Makers; and she has developed several training courses on law, NCD prevention, childhood obesity, healthy diets and food marketing. The Law & NCD Unit is actively involved in the new UKPRP-funded PETRA network on Trade and Health. Amandine Garde is Scientific Advisor to the European Public Health Alliance. In January 2021, she was elected President of the new Public Health and Law Section of the European Public Health Association. She is also a commissioner of The Lancet-Chatham Commission on Improving Population Health post COVID 19 (2020-2022).
Speaker
Johanna is the CEO of World Obesity Federation and a global leader in noncommunicable disease advocacy, with over 20 years’ experience of working in NCDs worldwide. Prior to joining World Obesity in 2017, Johanna was the CEO of the World Heart Federation and Vice Chair of the NCD Alliance. During her time at the World Heart Federation, Johanna led the CVD community’s coordinated effort to elevate CVD on the global health agenda. From 1999 to 2011, Johanna was VP Global Strategies at the American Cancer Society, where she built and led global capacity-building programmes in cancer and tobacco control in low and middle income countries. Johanna has served on a number of advisory boards and expert groups for the World Health Organization, World Economic Forum, Lancet, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and has spoken at global sessions with heads of state and health ministers. She has published in journals, newspapers and other publications on NCDs and wider health issues. Since 2017, Johanna has also been a Fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, writing and teaching on NCDs and global health security.
Speaker
My research focuses on behavioural medicine. This is the integration of biological, psychological and sociological knowledge to prevent and treat disease and to aid rehabilitation. You can read more about our research on our team website here https://www.phc.ox.ac.uk/research/research-themes/health-behaviours-theme.
My work focuses on helping people change their behaviour, either to prevent serious disease, or as a treatment for that disease.
A lot of my work has examined interventions to help people stop or reduce their smoking and lately I have worked in helping people manage their weight if they have become obese.
People often use several drugs to help them stop smoking but our research suggested that combining these drugs does not help more than taking only one of them. Our research has shown that people who stop smoking put on a considerable amount of weight and we are investigating the best ways to prevent this weight gain but without harming the chance of stopping smoking.
One of our trials showed that people who were referred to commercial weight management providers lost more weight than people who tried to lose weight without support. However, people who went to their GP or practice nurse for support did no better than people trying without support. This result helped change government policy and local health organisations now contract with commercial weight providers. We have also shown that a brief 30-second behavioural intervention delivered by a clinician opportunistically can motivate a person to take up effective support and lose weight. Such brief interventions were highly acceptable to patients and easy for clinicians to deliver.
I work with several other organisations to improve health and healthcare. I am former president of the UK Society of Behavioural Medicine, a former trustee of the Association for the Study of Obesity, a member of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. I am a senior editor of the journal Addiction and coordinating editor of the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group. I have worked on several NICE working groups and advised the Department of Health on smoking and obesity.
I try to make my publications available to everyone. Please have a look for them here https://ora.ox.ac.uk/ or on researchgate.net.
Speaker/Tutor
Mike's research interests include the environmental, economic, and health impacts of food systems. He uses models to provide quantitative estimates on the current and projected impacts of the food system, as well as the potential benefits of changing the food system (e.g. by changing diets, or the rate at which yields increases).
Mike joined the Centre on Population Approaches for Non-Communicable Disease Prevention in August 2018, and is working on expanding the Centre's food system model to incorporate biodiversity and economic outcomes in collaboration with the Wellcome funded projected "Livestock, Environment and People", as well as with researchers from other departments across Oxford and international collaborators.
Mike holds a PhD in Natural Resources Science and Management from the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, and studied biology and ecology at undergraduate level.
https://www.ndph.ox.ac.uk/team/michael-clark
Speaker
Anna Gilmore MBBS (hons), DTM&H MSc (dist) PhD FFPH is Professor of Public Health, and Founding Director of the Tobacco Control Research Group (TCRG) at the University of Bath. Her work addresses the commercial determinants of health and policy evaluation, with a particular focus on corporate influences on public policy and tobacco. Her work has impacted at national, European and global level, which is recognised through the Public Health Advocacy Institute Award and the WHO World No Tobacco Day Award. In 2019 TCRG was awarded the inaugural European Health Leadership Award (EHLA),. Anna has over 200 publications, is European Editor (previously Senior Editor) of Tobacco Control, is/has been a member of international and national expert groups including the WHO Expert Committee to Examine Tobacco Industry Interference with Tobacco Control and the Royal College of Physicians Tobacco Advisory Group. Anna and TCRG established www.TobaccoTactics.org, an acclaimed knowledge exchange platform that provides research on tobacco industry conduct to a broad audience. In 2018 TCRG and partner organisations, were awarded funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies to establish a global tobacco industry watchdog – Stopping Tobacco Organizations and Products (STOP) in which TCRG acts as the research partner.
You can follow the TCRG on @BathTR.
https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/persons/anna-gilmore
Speaker
Marco Springmann is a senior researcher in the Centre on Population Approaches for Non-Communicable Disease Prevention in the Nuffield Department of Population Health, and leads the Centre’s programme on environmental sustainability and public health. He is interested in the health, environmental, and economic dimensions of the global food systems. He often uses systems models to provide quantitative estimates on food-related questions.
Tutor
Ferdinant (Ferdy) is the Chair of the Interim Secretariat of the African NCDs Network (ANN) since September 2020. He is also the Secretary General of the Cameroon Civil Society NCD Alliance and President of the Reconciliation and Development Association (RADA). He has worked in the domain of NCDs since 2015, where he was central to the establishment of the NCD prevention and control program of the Cameroon Baptist Convention Health Services, led an awareness and screening campaigns in 11 health districts in 7 regions of Cameroon which educated 1million + and screened 60,000+ people through comprehensive NCD risks exposure assessments. He is also a One Young World Ambassador, a 2019 US Department of State Community Solutions Fellow and Union for International Cancer Control Fellow. Meet our me on Twitter @ferdinantmbiy working towards sustainable solutions to community development challenges.
Tutor
Dr. Sunday Olawale Onagbiye is a Human Movement Scientist and Senior Post-Doctoral Research Fellow/Senior Lecturer/Departmental research coordinator at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), Cape Town, South Africa. He obtained his Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) Honours in Physical and Health Education, Master of Arts (MA) in Physical Education with Exercise Physiology option) at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Human Movement Science at the North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, South Africa. He also obtained a Certificate in Prevention Strategies for Non-Communicable Diseases at the University of Oxford (United Kingdom). Dr. Sunday is a member of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), The Cochrane Collaboration, South African Sports Medicine Association (SASMA), and Public Health Association of South Africa (PHASA). He is a member of Future Leader/ Volunteer (FLV) and The Foundation for Global Community Health (GCH). He is a visiting fellow at the Faculty of Medicine & Life Sciences SMRG – Sports Medicine Research Group, Hasselt University, Belgium. He is also a specialist reviewer for both local and international journals. Dr. Sunday’s research interest focused on physical activity intervention on risks factor for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and health promotion, Sports performance, health-related quality of life, cardio-metabolic health, energy expenditure, obesity, health risks behaviour, mental & musculoskeletal health, PA and climate change, and immigrant health. His research findings have been presented at both national and international conferences. He has supervised masters and honours students and has a strong interest in health promotion & wellbeing and how global citizen’s health can improve.
Tutor
Yetunde John-Akinola is a lecturer and researcher at the Department of Health Promotion and Education, Faculty of Public Health, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. She was a PhD fellow at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Health Promotion Research at the National University of Ireland in Galway (NUIG), Ireland and a research fellow of the Community Engagement Core (CEC) of the Regional Centre for Research Excellence (RCRE) in Noncommunicable Diseases and Women’s Health Research Group, both of the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan. She has been co-facilitating a Short Course on Prevention Strategies for NCDs in Africa in collaboration with the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre on Population Approaches for Non Communicable Disease Prevention, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. Her interests in public health include prevention of non-communicable diseases, school health promotion, promoting young people’s health and wellbeing and women’s health research, and recently child health. Yetunde John-Akinola has been extensively involved in research and her work has been published in scholarly and peer-reviewed journals. She has presented at both National and International conferences.
Tutor
Ben started DPhil with the CPNP in October 2018 and will be working on local area chronic disease scenario modelling. This will allow the cost-effectiveness of chronic disease prevention strategies to be compared across local areas and allow the impacts of national public health policy on geographic health inequalities to be estimated.
He studied Medicine at undergraduate in Manchester, including a Master’s in Research. This was mainly qualitative work in the field of Medical Education Research and contributed to the contemporaneous curriculum review. He then worked as an Academic Clinical Fellow in General Practice at the University of Manchester and studied a Master’s in Health Policy at Imperial College.
He continues to work as a GP in an inner-city area one day a week alongside his DPhil. Alongside chronic disease modelling, he is also interested in structural causes of disease (the food system, urban planning, the job market), health inequalities and the social determinants of health and wellbeing.
Speaker
Mamsallah is a practising GP/Family physician. She began work as a GP in inner city London, before moving to South Africa to work in operational research at the interface of HIV and primary care, subsequently working as a Clinical Lecturer in Family Medicine at Wits University. Most recently Mamsallah has worked in clinical practice in Lagos alongside a role as Faculty at the Healthcare Leadership Academy: HLA Africa. With an MSc in Global Health Policy from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Mamsallah is also a seasoned health policy consultant and is currently based between the UK and Nigeria. With PCI, Mamsallah has worked with the WHO, UNHCR, IRC and others to strengthen primary healthcare systems in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, with a focus on building capacity for NCD care in primary healthcare. She is currently leading efforts to grow and expand an open access Covid-19 e-learning resource for front-line health workers in resource-poor settings. She is also providing leadership for a collaboration with the WHO, which will see PCI co-create a package of NCD learning resources for global roll-out as part of a programme building capacity for integrated primary care.
Speaker
Peter is an Early Career Research Fellow in the Clinical Trial Service Unit and Epidemiological Studies Unit (CTSU). His research is based on the China Kadoorie Biobank and focuses on the understanding of the effects of environmental exposures (particularly air pollution and smoking) on major chronic diseases. He is particularly interested in integrating multi-dimensional data (e.g. wearable devices, OMICs) to assess the health impact of environmental exposures more accurately and comprehensively.
Before joining CTSU, Peter has received training in epidemiology, having obtained an MSc in Global Health Science and a DPhil in Population Health, both from the Nuffield Department of Population Health. He had also studied public health at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Johns Hopkins Blomberg School of Public Health, and Copenhagen School of Global Health.
Speaker
Nia is a senior outreach librarian at the University of Oxford Bodleian Health Care Libraries. She has worked in health care libraries for over 15 years. In recent years she has worked closely with the Department of Population Health and Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, teaching searching skills and contributing to systematic reviews and evidence syntheses.
Speaker
Melanie Morris is Assistant Professor in Cancer Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. After an Experimental Psychology degree at Oxford University, Melanie trained at the Institute of Education and worked for several years in schools. In 2003 she undertook an MSc and then a PhD in Epidemiology at LSHTM. She then worked at UCL, returning to LSHTM in the Cancer Survival Group in 2012. Projects have included investigating the impact of screening on breast cancer survival differentials between ethnic and socio-economic groups, and investigating geographic variation in cancer outcomes in the UK and variations in treatment that may explain differences in cancer survival between England and the Nordic countries. She now works in the Health Services Research and Policy Department. She has studied the factors in different high-income health systems that may impact differences in cancer survival and is now the lead epidemiologist for the National Prostate Cancer Audit. She organises and teaches on various modules at the School, both in-house and on the Distance Learning (DL) programme. She has written a Cancer Epidemiology session for the DL module Global Non-Communicable Diseases.
Speaker
Luis Manuel Encarnacion holds a BA in International Relations, a diploma in Political Science by the Institute d'Études Politiques (Sciences Po) - France, and a MSc in International Health Policy at the London School of Economics (LSE). He holds certificates in legislative planning, public health, health economics, and civil society management. Between 2013-2016, Luis was the Director of Fundación Mídete, a Mexican non-government organization working on prevention and control of obesity and diabetes. Between 2013-2017, he was the Coordinator of the ContraPESO Coalition, becoming one of the most important spokespersons and advocates of the tax on sugary drinks in Mexico, proposal approved by Congress in 2013 and adopted since 2014. He was also the Co-coordinator of the México Salud-Hable Coalition, the national NCD alliance with more than 100 members, and the former leader of the Mexico City chapter of the Young Professionals Chronic Disease Network (YPCDN). In 2018, Luis became a member of NCD Child’s Governing Council for the period 2018-2020, and his tenure was renewed for a second term from 2020-2022. He’s currently Capacity Development Manager at NCD Alliance based in Mexico City, where he leads the NCDA Advocacy Institute, a flagship initiative supporting coalition building and advocacy efforts in Latin America, Africa and Asia, promoting the strengthening of civil society as platforms for NCD policy change.
Speaker
Grace is a lived experience mental health advocate living in Kigali, Rwanda. She is a young leader for the Lancet Commission for Global Mental Health and Sustainable Development and is an advisor for the Welcome Trust Mental Health Priority Area, as well as a commissioner on the Lancet Commission on Gender Based Violence and the Maltreatment of Young People. Grace is dedicated to seeing a world where specialised mental health care and meaningful youth involvement is availed for everyone but particularly for marginalised, under resourced, and underrepresented populations in the world.