Professor Martin McKee CBE MD DSc MSc FRCP FRCPE FRCPI FFPH FMedSci

Professor of European Public Health

I qualified in medicine in Belfast, Northern Ireland, with subsequent training in internal medicine and public health. As Professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine I co-direct the European Centre on Health of Societies in Transition (ECOHOST), a WHO Collaborating Centre that comprises the largest team of researchers working on health and health policy in central and eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. I am also research director of the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, a unique partnership of universities, national and regional governments, and international agencies and am President-elect of the European Public Health Association. I have published over 700 scientific papers and 40 books. I was an editor of the European Journal of Public Health for 15 years and am a member of numerous editorial boards, as well as being an editorial consultant to The Lancet. I have been invited to give many endowed lectures, including the Milroy (Royal College of Physicians), Cochrane (UK Society for Social Medicine), Ference Bojan (EUPHA), Davidson (Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh), Salvador Lucia (UCSF), Population Health Sciences (McMaster University),  DARE (UK Faculty of Public Health), Victor Horsley (British Medical Association), Duncan (City of Liverpool) and Thackrah (University of Leeds). I sit on a number of advisory boards in Europe and North America, in both the public and private sectors and I was a trustee of the UK Public Health Association. I am a former chair of WHO's European Advisory Committee on Health Research and the current chair of the Global Health Advisory Committee of George Soros' Open Society Foundations. I am a Fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of London, Edinburgh, and Ireland and the UK Faculty of Public Health and a former chair of the UK Society for Social Medicine. My contributions to European health policy have been recognised by, among others, election to the UK Academy of Medical Sciences, the Romanian Academy of Medical Sciences, and the US Institute of Medicine, by the award of honorary doctorates from Hungary, The  Netherlands and Sweden, and visiting professorships at the Universities of Zagreb and Belgrade, the London School of Economics, and Taipei Medical University. In 2003 I was awarded the Andrija Stampar medal for contributions to European public health and in 2005 was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by HM Queen Elizabeth II.

You can read more about me in my Lancet profile

My video interviews include:

Health in Time of Transition

The health effects of austerity in Europe

The global rise of non-communicable diseases

You can follow me on Twitter at @martinmckee

Affiliation

Teaching

I established and now contribute to a course on issues in public health, taught in the autumn term. This course seeks to show that public health can actually be exciting and stimulating. It is intended for people who want to make the world a better, and fairer place to live in. It uses problem based learning and is based on real life issues, such as gun control, discrimination, and challenging vested interests. It is not for those who see public health as a way to a quiet life! I also contribute to a course on health systems, in the summer term, that draws extensively on our work in the European Observatory.

Research

My main research foci are health determinants (especially social change, alcohol, tobacco and nutrition), health system performance, and the relationship between health and the economy.

Research areas

  • Adolescent health
  • Ageing
  • Health care financing
  • Health care policy
  • Health inequalities
  • Health policy
  • Health sector development
  • Health systems
  • Tobacco control

Disciplines

  • Demography
  • Epidemiology
  • Policy analysis

Regions

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

Countries

  • Azerbaijan
  • Belarus
  • China
  • Colombia
  • Estonia
  • Ethiopia
  • Georgia
  • Germany
  • Hungary
  • Kazakhstan
  • Kyrgyz Republic
  • Latvia
  • Lithuania
  • Malaysia
  • Romania
  • Russian Federation
  • South Africa
  • Tajikistan
  • Turkmenistan
  • Ukraine
  • United Kingdom
  • United States
  • Uzbekistan

Other interests

  • Advocacy
  • Eastern Europe
  • Former Soviet Union
  • Health And Transition
  • MARCH
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