Biography:
Professor Andy Haines is Professor of Public Health and Primary Care with a joint appointment in the Department of Social and Environmental Health Research and in the Department of Population Health. He was Director (originally Dean) of the School for nearly 10 years, up to October 2010, having previously been Professor of Primary Health Care at UCL between 1987-2000. He worked part-time as a general practitioner in North London for many years.
Between 1993-1996 he was on secondment as Director of Research & Development at the NHS Executive, North Thames and was consultant epidemiologist at the MRC Epidemiology and Medical Care Unit between 1980-7. He has also worked internationally in Nepal, Jamaica, Canada and the USA.
He has been a member of a number of major international and national committees including the MRC Global Health Group ( chair) and the MRC Strategy Group.
Professor Haines was formerly chair of the Universities UK Health and Social Care Policy Committee and a member of the WHO Advisory Committee on Health Research. He was a member of Working Group 2 of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the second and third assessment reports and review editor of the health chapter in the fifth assessment report, and chaired the Scientific Advisory Panel for the 2013 WHO World Health Report on Research for Universal Health Coverage. He sits on a number of other national and international committees.
Professor Haines' research interests are in epidemiology and health services research focussing particularly on research in primary care and the study of environmental influences on health, including the potential effects of climate change and the health co-benefits of the low carbon economy. Previous research includes a number of randomised trials evaluating interventions to change patient and practitioner behaviour and the impact of information and communications technology on primary care. He is also interested in how health systems issues affect the scaling up of primary health care programmes.
As chair of an international task force on developing guidance for health system strengthening he co-authored a series of articles on the challenges of assessing evidence for health systems policies and developing guidance for policymakers.