LUNG UK - Key Persons
David Strachan is professor of epidemiology and director of the Population Health Research Institute at St George's, University of London.
He qualified in medicine from Edinburgh University in 1981 and obtained his MD degree in 1990 for epidemiological studies of childhood asthma and the home environment in that city. In 1999, he was awarded the European Respiratory Society prize for paediatric respiratory research in Europe (jointly with Professor Derek Cook), for systematic reviews of the effects of parental smoking on health of children.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Director of the Small Area Health Statistics Unit
Anna Hansell is Assistant Director of the Small Area Health Statistics Unit (SAHSU) at the national MRC-PHE Centre for Environment and Health based at Imperial College London. She also holds an honorary consultant contract with Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.
Her research interests are environmental noise and air pollution, respiratory disease epidemiology and use of small area data in geographical studies.
She leads on national and international studies examining long-term health effects of environmental exposures and has oversight of the SAHSU databases containing over 300 million patient records.
She is a member of the independent scientific committee advising the UK government, the Committee on the Toxicity of chemicals in food, consumer products and the environment (COT), member of the Public Health England Environmental Hazards Programme Board.
Job Titles:
- Research Associate in Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the Small Area Health Statistics Unit
Ioannis Bakolis is a Research Associate in Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the Small Area Health Statistics Unit (SAHSU) based at Imperial College London, where he is working on projects related to respiratory and environmental epidemiology.
During his time at Imperial and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Dr Bakolis has been responsible for the statistical analysis of various multi-centre European projects around respiratory, nutritional, environmental, genetics and social epidemiology - the European Community Respiratory Health Survey, the Global Asthma and Allergy Network of Excellence, the Health Effects of Indoor Pollutants Survey, and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Nottingham
Jack Gibson is Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Nottingham. He is an expert in the processing and analysis of data from electronic medical records (EMRs).
Dr Gibson has worked on a range of projects using EMR data to study the burden and causes of respiratory diseases such as COPD and pneumonia, the impact of taking prescription medications on the risk of motor vehicle crashes, and on the safety of medications in pregnancy.
He has also collaborated on multidisciplinary projects aimed at improving the quality of EMR data, using EMR data to identify potential side effects of prescription drugs, and linking EMR data with soil quality data from the British Geological survey to enable the study of environmental causes of cancer. He is also a Statistical Editor for the medical journal Thorax.
Job Titles:
- Research Associate in Epidemiology for the Small Area Health Statistics Unit
Rebecca Ghosh is a postdoctoral Research Associate in Epidemiology for the Small Area Health Statistics Unit (SAHSU) at the MRC-PHE centre for Environment and Health, Imperial College London.
Her principal research interests lie in environmental epidemiology and public health. Dr Ghosh is involved in a wide range of SAHSU studies investigating the health effects of environmental exposures. She works on a number of projects ranging from the health effects of incinerators and bio-composting waste facilities, hospital admissions for CO poisoning and air pollution.
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Fellow at St George 's University of London
Elizabeth Limb is a Senior Research Fellow at St George's University of London, with a particular interest in Respiratory Epidemiology and Statistics.
Whilst at St George's she has worked as a Statistician on a variety of research projects including studies of asthma, the health effects of air pollution and a trial of different methods of ventilation in premature infants.
Her work analysing large routine data sets to examine trends and patterns in respiratory disease has led to contributing data and analyses to the British Thoracic Society's second Burden of Lung Disease Report and more recently, the European Respiratory Society White Book.
For two years she also collaborated with colleagues at Imperial College on asthma prevalence for the Global Burden of Disease project.
Alongside her recent work on the BLF Lung Health of the Nation project she is currently working with colleagues at St George's on primary care physical activity trials.
Ramyani Gupta is a Senior Research Fellow at St George's, University of London.
She is a statistician with extensive experience in the secondary analysis of large routine data sets to describe time trends and patterns of disease nationally and internationally, particularly in the field of respiratory and allergic disease epidemiology.
She has recently contributed an analysis of European respiratory hospital admissions to the latest European Respiratory Society White Book and previously completed a review of global COPD prevalence for the WHO Global Burden of Disease project.
She is currently using national health surveys of England and Scotland to investigate socio-demographic risk factors for poor lung function and later health outcomes and, together with other routine sources, to assess the burden of lung disease in the UK.
Richard Hubbard is a consultant chest physician and epidemiologist based at the University of Nottingham. He is currently the British Lung Foundation Professor of Respiratory Epidemiology.
His main clinical interest is the care of people with interstitial lung disease and the short and long term respiratory complications of bone marrow transplantation.
Currently his main research projects relate to the aetiology and natural history of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and access to care for people with lung cancer, but Richard is also interested in the epidemiology of allergic disease and provision of care for all people with lung disease.