Anne Mackie is the Director of Programmes for the UK National Screening Committee, [1] which sets health screening policy throughout the UK by advising ministers and the NHS in the four UK countries about all aspects of screening, and supports implementation of screening programmes. [2]
Mackie qualified as a doctor at King's College Hospital, London, in 1985, [3] and has been working in public health for 20 years across London and the South East of England. She has also been the medical director of the National Specialist Commissioning Advisory Group, Director of Public Health in Kent and Director of Public Health in South West London. Prior to her current role she was the Director of Public Health for London SHA. [4]
The UK National Screening Committee, of which Mackie is Director of Programmes, [5] oversees 12 population screening programmes across the UK. [6]
The British Medical Association (BMA) is a registered trade union for doctors in the United Kingdom. The association does not regulate or certify doctors, a responsibility which lies with the General Medical Council. The association's headquarters are in Tavistock Square, London and it has national offices in Cardiff, Belfast, and Edinburgh, a European office in Brussels and a number of offices in English regions. The BMA has a range of representative and scientific committees and is recognised by National Health Service (NHS) employers as the sole contract negotiator for doctors.
Screening, in medicine, is a strategy used to look for as-yet-unrecognised conditions or risk markers. This testing can be applied to individuals or to a whole population. The people tested may not exhibit any signs or symptoms of a disease, or they might exhibit only one or two symptoms, which by themselves do not indicate a definitive diagnosis.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) is an independent expert advisory committee that advises United Kingdom health departments on immunisation, making recommendations concerning vaccination schedules and vaccine safety. It has a statutory role in England and Wales, and health departments in Scotland and Northern Ireland may choose to accept its advice.
Dame Valerie Beral AC DBE FRS FRCOG FMedSci was an Australian-born British epidemiologist, academic and a preeminent specialist in breast cancer epidemiology. She was Professor of Epidemiology, a Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford and was the Head of the Cancer Epidemiology Unit at the University of Oxford and Cancer Research UK from 1989.
Tim Kelsey is CEO of Beamtree, an international pioneer in health data analytics based in Sydney, Australia. Beamtree is an Australian Healthcare company (ASX:BMT) that works around the world to better capture, manage and leverage human expertise to improve performance and health outcomes. He started in the role in December 2020.
Dame Sally Claire Davies is a British physician and academic administrator who was the Chief Medical Officer from 2010 to 2019 and Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department of Health from 2004 to 2016. She worked as a clinician specialising in the treatment of diseases of the blood and bone marrow. She was appointed Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, on 8 February 2019, effective from 8 October 2019. She is one of the founders of the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).
John Eric Deanfield is a British professor of cardiology and past Olympic fencer.
Dame Clare Mary Louise Francis Gerada, Lady Wessely, is a London-based general practitioner who is President of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) and a former chairperson of the RCGP Council (2010–2013). She has professional interests in mental health and substance misuse.
Public Health England (PHE) was an executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care in England which began operating on 1 April 2013 to protect and improve health and wellbeing and reduce health inequalities. Its formation came as a result of the reorganisation of the National Health Service (NHS) in England outlined in the Health and Social Care Act 2012. It took on the role of the Health Protection Agency, the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse and a number of other health bodies. It was an executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care, and a distinct delivery organisation with operational autonomy.
Sir Paul Anthony Cosford was a British emeritus medical director at Public Health England (PHE), the UK's public health agency, later replaced by the UK Health Security Agency. He had executive roles from 2010 at PHE's predecessor, the Health Protection Agency. From April 2013 to 2019 he was PHE's Medical Director and Director for Health Protection, making him responsible for advising on services to prevent and control infectious diseases and for preparations and responses to public health emergencies. He led the MMR vaccine catch-up campaign in response to the resurgence of measles following the MMR Scare, and contributed to the response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak, the Grenfell disaster in 2017, and the 2018 Novichok poisonings in Salisbury and Amesbury. Over the course of his career in public health he led programmes to reduce hospital-acquired infections and tuberculosis, and oversaw ways of dealing with health inequalities, tobacco, obesity, and responses to pandemic flu.
Nita Gandhi Forouhi is a British physician and academic, specialising in nutrition and epidemiology. She is Professor of Population Health and Nutrition at the University of Cambridge, the programme leader of the nutritional epidemiology programme of its MRC Epidemiology Unit, and an honorary consultant public health physician with Public Health England.
Wendy Sheila Atkin was Professor of Gastrointestinal Epidemiology at Imperial College London.
Jason Andrew Leitch is the National Clinical Director of the Scottish Government. He is a Senior Clinical Advisor to the Scottish Government and a member of the Health and Social Care Management Board. Leitch provided key leadership throughout the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He has been praised for his ability to translate complex scientific information to the public, providing calm and clear advice.
Sir Christopher John MacRae Whitty is a British epidemiologist serving as Chief Medical Officer for England (CMO) and Chief Medical Adviser to the UK Government since 2019. He has also been Gresham Professor of Physic since 2018.
Devi Lalita Sridhar FRSE is an American public health researcher, who is both professor and chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Her research considers the effectiveness of public health interventions and how to improve developmental assistance for health. Sridhar directs the University of Edinburgh's Global Health Governance Programme which she established in 2014.
Rosalind Raine is a British applied health research scientist, public medicine doctor, professor of health care evaluation and the founding head of the Department of Applied Health Research at University College London (UCL).
Margaret Mary McCartney is a general practitioner, freelance writer and broadcaster based in Glasgow, Scotland. McCartney is a vocal advocate for evidence-based medicine. McCartney was a regular columnist at the British Medical Journal. She regularly writes articles for The Guardian and currently contributes to the BBC Radio 4 programme, Inside Health. She has written three popular science books, The Patient Paradox, The State of Medicine and Living with Dying. During the COVID-19 pandemic, McCartney contributed content to academic journals and broadcasting platforms, personal blog, and social media to inform the public and dispel myths about coronavirus disease.
Ibrahim Ibrahim Abubakar is a British-Nigerian epidemiologist who is Professor in Infectious Disease Epidemiology at University College London and Dean of the UCL Faculty of Population Health Sciences.
Gabriel John Scally FFPHM is an Irish public health physician and a former regional director of public health (RDPH) for the south west of England. He is a visiting professor of public health at the University of Bristol and is a member of the Independent SAGE group, formed during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. He is also chair of the trustees of the Soil Association. Previously he was professor of public health and planning, and director of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Healthy Urban Environments, both at the University of the West of England (UWE). He was president of the section of epidemiology and public health of the Royal Society of Medicine, a position he took in 2017.
Operation Moonshot was a UK government programme to introduce same-day mass testing for COVID-19 in England as a way of enabling large gatherings of people to take place in that country while maintaining control over the virus. According to the British Medical Journal, the programme aimed to deliver 10 million tests per day by 2021.