Martin McKee | |
---|---|
Born | Clifford Martin McKee 12 July 1956 |
Alma mater | Royal Belfast Academical Institution |
Scientific career | |
Institutions | London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine |
Notable students | Helena Legido-Quigley |
Clifford Martin McKee, CBE (born 12 July 1956), is professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
He was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and trained as a doctor at The Queen’s University of Belfast, qualifying in 1979 and specialized initially in internal medicine at the Belfast City Hospital and the Royal Victoria Hospital between 1979 and 1985, before moving into public health. McKee currently lives in London with his wife Dorothy and two daughters.
Martin McKee created the European Centre on Health of Societies in Transition in 1997 with Professor David Leon, a WHO Collaborating Centre comprising a team of researchers working primarily on health and health policy in central and eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He is also research director of the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, a partnership of universities, national and regional governments, international agencies and was President of the European Public Health Association between 2014 and 2016. In September 2021 he was elected as President Elect of the British Medical Association. He has published over 1300 scientific papers and 50 books, was an editor of the European Journal of Public Health for 15 years. [1]
Appointed to a senior lecturer post in 1989 with responsibility for developing a program of research in Europe, he was immediately confronted with two major changes: the collapse of the communist regimes in central and eastern Europe and, later, in the USSR, and the removal of borders within the expanding European Union. He has led major programs on both issues. With his colleagues Professor David Leon and Vladimir Shkolnikov, he has contributed important new insights into the adverse health consequences of rapid social and political transition, the entry of the international tobacco corporations into these new markets, and the role of alcohol, and especially substances such as aftershaves (odekolon) in the high levels of premature mortality seen in this region. More recently, his work on social change has extended into a large body of research on the health effects of the post-2007 financial crisis, jointly with Dr David Stuckler. His research on the European Union has included books and articles on the impact of European law on health and health policy, European research policy, and cross-border mobility of patients. In 2013 he led a Lancet series on health in Europe. In 2016 he co-founded Healthier IN the EU, a grassroots campaign making the health case for continued UK membership of the European Union. [2]
With colleagues Josep Figueras, Elias Mossialos, and Richard Saltman, he established the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies.
When Lord Darzi proposed the establishment of Polyclinics in England McKee wrote a paper with Bernd Rechel of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in which they observed:
Polyclinics were a centrepiece of the Soviet model of healthcare delivery, but many countries of Central and Eastern Europe have abandoned them over the past two decades in favour of a system of general practice that draws extensively on the British model. Advisers from the World Bank, the EU, and many bilateral donors agreed that the polyclinic had failed to deliver modern, integrated health care and saw general practices as the future. [3]
His involvement in the article Why has mortality in England and Wales been increasing?, [4] written with Danny Dorling and others generated considerable publicity. The article suggested that the most likely reason for increased mortality among old people in England and Wales in 2015 was the application of austerity policies, saying that “the evidence points to a major failure of the health system, possibly exacerbated by failings in social care”. [5]
McKee has been a critic of the NHS reforms introduced by the UK's coalition government in 2012, arguing that they were unworkable and would lead to fragmentation and confusion. In January 2014 he said that continuing health inequalities among London boroughs was a scandal and that coalition reforms had left it unclear who was supposed to analyse health data and tackle the problems highlighted. [6]
In 2020, McKee was appointed by the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Europe to serve as a member and chair of its scientific committee of the Pan-European Commission on Health and Sustainable Development, chaired by Mario Monti. [7] He and the colleagues then published "Drawing light from the pandemic: A new strategy for health and sustainable development: A Review of the Evidence" [8]
McKee has received honorary doctorates from the universities of Debrecen (Hungary), Maastricht (The Netherlands), Karlstad (Sweden), Queen's (Belfast), Athens School of Public Health (Greece) and the Nordic School of Public Health. He has been elected to the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and the US National Academy of Medicine. He was made a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) by HM Queen Elizabeth II for services to health in the 2005 Birthday Honours. He was elected president of the British Medical Association for 2022-3. [9]
Archibald Leman Cochrane was a Scottish physician noted for his book, Effectiveness and Efficiency: Random Reflections on Health Services, which advocated the use of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to improve clinical trials and medical interventions. His advocacy of RCTs eventually led to the creation of the Cochrane Library database of systematic reviews, the UK Cochrane Centre in Oxford and Cochrane, an international organization of review groups that are based at research institutions worldwide. He is known as one of the fathers of modern clinical epidemiology and is considered to be the originator of the idea of evidence-based medicine. The Archie Cochrane Archive is held at the Archie Cochrane Library at University Hospital Llandough, Penarth.
Sir Austin Bradford Hill was an English epidemiologist who pioneered the modern randomised clinical trial and, together with Richard Doll, demonstrated the connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. Hill is widely known for pioneering the "Bradford Hill" criteria for determining a causal association.
James Francis Pantridge, was a Northern Irish physician, cardiologist, and professor who transformed emergency medicine and paramedic services with the invention of the portable defibrillator.
Polyclinics in England were intended to offer a greater range of services than were offered by current general practitioner (GP) practices and local health centres. In addition to traditional GP services they would offer extended urgent care, healthy living services, community mental health services and social care, whilst being more accessible and less medicalised than hospitals. A variety of models were proposed, ranging from networks of existing clinics to larger premises with several colocated general practitioner (GP) practices, more extensive facilities and additional services provided by allied healthcare professionals.
Trevor A. Sheldon is a British academic and University administrator who is a former Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of York and Dean of Hull York Medical School. He has held academic posts at the University of York, the University of Leeds, the University of Leicester and Kingston University.
Sir John Irving Bell is a Canadian-British immunologist and geneticist. From 2006 to 2011, he was President of the United Kingdom's Academy of Medical Sciences, and since 2002 he has held the Regius Chair of Medicine at the University of Oxford. He was since 2006 Chairman of the Office for Strategic Coordination of Health Research (OSCHR) but in 2020 became a normal member. Bell was selected to the Vaccine Taskforce sometime before 1 July 2020. Bell is also on the board of directors of the SOE quango Genomics England.
Jeremiah Noah Morris was a Scottish epidemiologist who established the importance of physical activity in preventing cardiovascular disease.
Danny Dorling is a British social geographer. Since 2013, he has been Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography of the School of Geography and the Environment of the University of Oxford.
Dame Parveen June Kumar is a British doctor who is a Professor of Medicine and Education at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry. She worked in the NHS for over 40 years as a consultant gastroenterologist and physician at Barts and the London Hospitals and the Homerton University Hospital. She was the President of the British Medical Association in 2006, of the Royal Society of Medicine from 2010 to 2012, of the Medical Women's Federation from 2016 to 2018 and of the Royal Medical Benevolent Fund from 2013 to 2020. She was also Vice President of the Royal College of Physicians from 2003 to 2005. In addition, she was a founding non-executive director of the National Institute of Clinical Excellence, chaired the Medicines Commission UK until 2005, and also chaired the BUPA Foundation Charity for Research until 2013.
Dinesh Kumar Makhan Lal Bhugra is a professor of mental health and diversity at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London. He is an honorary consultant psychiatrist at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and is former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Bhugra was the president of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) between 2014 and 2017 and the President of the British Medical Association in 2018-2019.
Professor Harminder Singh Dua is an Indian-British medical doctor and researcher. He is the chair and professor of ophthalmology at University of Nottingham and is the head of the Division of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences. Prior, he was associate professor at the Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, USA when he was invited to chair in Nottingham in April 1994. He earlier did his Graduation in Medicine from Government Medical College and Hospital, Nagpur.
Gillian Catherine Leng, Lady Cosford CBE is a British health administrator, academic, visiting professor at King's College London and the former Chief Executive of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), where she was responsible for several programmes and guidelines including the guidelines on COVID-19. In 2024 she became president of the Royal Society of Medicine (RSM).
Walter Werner Holland was an epidemiologist and public health physician.
Rosalind Louise Smyth CBE is an Irish-British paediatrician. She is Professor of Child Health at UCL the Director of the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health from 2012 until 2022. She has been Vice Dean Research in the UCL Faculty of Population Health Sciences since 2022.
Owen Lyndon Wade (1921-2008) was a British medical researcher and academic, described by the Royal College of Physicians as "one of the founding fathers of clinical pharmacology and therapeutics in the UK".
Mary Graham "Mollie" McGeown was a Northern Irish nephrologist and biochemist. She was a pioneer in dialysis and kidney transplantation, overseeing the first dialysis centre in Northern Ireland and designing the "Belfast recipe" for post-transplantation care.
Mike Galsworthy is the co-founder of Scientists for EU and Healthier IN the EU and a media commentator about the effects of Brexit on the scientific community in the United Kingdom, and is Chair of the European Movement UK. He is currently a visiting researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and was previously Senior Research Associate in the Department of Applied Health Research, University College London (UCL).
Allan George Williams Whitfield (1909–1987) was an English physician.
Martin Marshall is a British medical academic and a general practitioner. He was chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) from 2019 until 2022. He works as a GP in Newham, East London.
Helena Legido-Quigley is a Spanish public health researcher who is an associate professor in Health Systems at Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at the National University of Singapore. She serves as an associate fellow of Chatham House and is a member of the Council of the World Economic Forum. She is editor-in-chief of Elsevier's Journal of Migration and Health.