Profile: Professor Nicholas Mays
Professor Nicholas Mays from the Health Services Research Unit talks about his career and research
"I am old enough to have developed an interest in health policy and health systems before there were many straightforward routes into the academic side of public health for non-medics. Likewise, bespoke training in health services research and health economics scarcely existed. As a result, I had the freedom to pursue a career that bears little resemblance to the orthodoxy of: a relevant first degree, a specialised Masters, a PhD, junior research positions and so on. Instead, I started with a degree in modern history, became interested in the 19th Century pre-history of the British welfare state, undertook a general ‘training’ in social policy and administration, was drawn to health policy and the National Health Service (NHS), and was encouraged to go and work in the NHS in the absence of an obvious ‘next step’.
My first job was in a Community Health Council (CHC) in 1979. CHCs were the local bodies in the NHS responsible for representing the consumer and wider public interest in the Service. As soon as I arrived, a new government proposed their abolition and I was thrown into writing briefing papers and taking part in advocacy on behalf of the CHCs. My interest in how policy decisions are made was fired. Since then, I have worked in medical schools carrying out a wide range of health services research, been a social science research commissioner and manager, led a research group in an independent health ‘think tank’ (the King’s Fund) and been a planner in the NHS. Throughout, I’ve maintained an interest in how decisions are taken and why systems change.
To cement my reputation as a hybrid (at various times I have been labelled a medical sociologist and health economist), in 1998 I went to work as principal adviser on health policy to the New Zealand Treasury. If the CHC experience had been the worm’s eye view of a system, the Treasury was the eagle’s, soaring above the minutiae. I was trying to answer near-impossible questions such as; how much more should we invest in the health sector compared with social security, housing to improve the health of New Zealanders? What is the contribution of better health to higher living standards, how does this occur and is there anything government can do to enhance it?
After more than 20 years within the health sector, it was stimulating to be working with colleagues from outside whose assumptions were different from mine. I learned that research could contribute to policy, but that few of the really important policy questions had been resolved by research. And so to the School where I am a relative newcomer.
Thanks to the School's commitment to engaging with the worlds of research and policy to improve health, I am lucky enough to have been given the flexibility to develop research on health policy while continuing to participate in health policy making. So, to prove the old aphorism “those who can’t ‘do’ teach” wrong, as Professor of Health Policy. I try to ‘do’ as well as research and teach."
Dr Donna Lamping also works in the Health Services Research Unit
