David Leon BA (Hons) PhD

Professor of Epidemiology

I went to to Cambridge university in 1971 to study natural sciences, with a passion for biochemistry. However, in a moment of idealism, I changed to philosophy and sociology, graduating in 1974. In 1978 I returned to science in my first job in epidemiology, and in 1985 I joined LSHTM as a lecturer in epidemiology. In 1991 I obtained a PhD in epidemiology from the University of London and in 2001 I was awarded an honorary doctorate in the faculty of medicine from the University of Uppsala, Sweden. I am a visiting professor at the Universities of Stockholm, Bristol and Glasgow, and in 2008 I was made an Honorary Academician of the Izhevsk State Medical Academy in Russia. Since October 2008 I have been deputy chair of the MRC's Population and System Medicine Board.

Affiliation

Teaching

I currently teach on a wide range of MSc courses at LSHTM including the introductory course on epidemiology. I also co-organise the Epidemiology of Non-communicable Diseases study unit in Term 2. This study unit aims to convey the growing importance of a wide range of non-communicable diseases throughout the world including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and mental health and injuries and violence.

Research

Over the past 15 years I have developed two main strands to my research. The first has involved setting up studies on the fetal and developmental origins of adult disease. With MRC funding I set up a number of studies with Swedish colleagues in Uppsala (the Uppsala Birth Cohort Study and the Uppsala Family Study) that have made contributions to the field particularly with respect to the association of foetal growth with blood pressure and the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer. I have also worked with colleagues in the UK to create a research platform for life-course epidemiology based on a cohort of 12 thousand men and women born in Aberdeen, Scotland in the early 1950s : The Aberdeen Children of the 1950s study.

The second strand has involved studying the health of populations of the former communist countries of Eastern Europe. This has increasingly focussed upon the role of alcohol as a key (proximal) factor in explaining the huge fluctuations that here have been in working age mortality in Russia since the mid-1980s. Collaborating with colleagues in Russia, Germany, Estonia and the UK we are studying the contribution of hazardous drinking to ill health and mortality. This is funded by a Wellcome Trust research programme (2006-2010) that includes an intervention trial as well as in-depth studies of the dynamics of alcohol drinking among men.

Research areas

  • Alcohol
  • Behaviour change
  • Child health
  • Global Health
  • International comparisons
  • Public health
  • Substance abuse

Disciplines

  • Epidemiology
  • Life-course epidemiology

Disease and Health Conditions

  • Addiction
  • Cardiovascular disease
  • Non-communicable diseases

Regions

  • Europe & Central Asia (all income levels)
  • European Union

Countries

  • Russian Federation

Other interests

  • autopsy
  • mortality trends
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