• Honorary Professor, University of Cape Town Medical School
• Honorary Professor, School of Nursing and Public Health, University of KwaZulu Natal. http://snph.ukzn.ac.za/Homepage.aspx

I teach and advise medical degree students, and train postgraduate research students in health services research methods. I have supervised thirteen PhD students to completion.

I am an academic public health physician, clincial epidemiologist and health services researcher. I have worked in 4 medical schools, in the UK (Bristol, UEA) and South Africa (Cape Town, Free State), doing epidemiological and health services research, and teaching public health and research methods to medical and postgraduate research students. 

As good primary health care is a foundation of good population health, my research is mostly focused on innovation, integration and evaluation of primary health care, for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, respiratory disease, diabetes, hyperension, depression and other long term conditions.   When I was a medical student and junior doctor in 1980s South Africa, I was active in anti-apartheid student and health politics. This led me into occupational health and safety, consulting and doing epidemiological research for non-racial trade unions. With the demise of apartheid I realised that great health benefits could come from expansion and strengthening of public sector primary health care. So I switched to health services research.

After public health specialist training in South Africa and the UK I learned more from British health services researchers and public health colleagues . The NHS encourages experimentation and is responsive to health services research evidence, which it funds well. This makes the UK a world leader in the research methods I use, such as the evaluation of complex interventions with cluster randomised trials, cost effectiveness evaluation, and interdisciplinary mixtures of epidemiology, economics and social science.  It is a privilege to be based in this scientifically excellent setting while helping my committed colleagues to tackle the health care challenges of high, middle and low income countries.  

Educational and professional qualifications

• PhD, University of Bristol

• MSc (Public Health Medicine), London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

• Diploma in Occupational Health, University of Cape Town

• Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBChB), University of Cape Town

• Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health, United Kingdom

How to improve health care, and so improve population health

• Primary health care, especially in Africa and South America, low and middle income countries, and the NHS
• Innovation, integration and evaluation of health care for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, respiratory disease, diabetes, hypertension, depression, cancer, and other long term conditions
• Implementation research: how to get evidence into practice through complex interventions aimed at changing professional, organisational behavour, for example using education and clinical practice guidelines. What that means is illustrated here: http://knowledgetranslation.co.za/ (I have worked with the KTU continuously for 20 years). 

Multi-disciplinary health services research methodology

• Health care evaluation of effectiveness, efficiency and equity using epidemiologic, economic, statistical and quantitative modelling methods
• Clinical epidemiology, pragmatic randomised trials, quasi-experiments and clinical cohort studies
• Evaluation of diagnostic tests and screening programmes
• Causal inference and effectiveness estimation from observational data