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 was founding director of the European Centre on Health of Societies in Transition, a WHO Collaborating Centre,  and which I led for over a decade. 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 a Commissioner, and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board, of the Pan European Commission on Health and Sustainable Development, reporting to WHO EURO. I am President of the British Medical Association for 2022/23. 

I am a former Chair of the UK Society for Social Medicine and Past President of the European Public Health Association. I have published over 1,450 scientific papers and 50 books and have an h-Index (Google Scholar) of 173. 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), Ferenc Bojan (EUPHA), Davidson and Dr Andrew Duncan (Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh), Salvador Lucia (UCSF), Population Health Sciences (McMaster University),  DARE (UK Faculty of Public Health), Victor Horsley (British Medical Association), Hjelt (University of Helsinki), Duncan (City of Liverpool), Thackrah (University of Leeds), Dixon (Ulster Medical Society), Sandy Macara (BMA), Neuberger (Hebrew University, Jerusalem), Litchfield (University of Oxford), Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy lecture, Schorstein (Barts), and Teddy Chester (University of Manchester). 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 board member at UCL Partners.

I am a former chair of WHO's European Advisory Committee on Health Research and of the Global Health Advisory Committee of George Soros' Open Society Foundations, and a member of the European Commission's Expert Panel on Investing in Health. I am also a Senior Fellow at the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research (CHOPR), University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing and a Senior International Fellow at the Population Health Research Institute, McMaster University.

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 US National Academy of Medicine, and the Academia Europaea, by the award of honorary doctorates from Hungary, The  Netherlands, Sweden,  Greece, and the United Kingdom (QUB), 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. In 2014 I was awarded the Alwyn Smith Prize for "the most outstanding contribution to the health of the public" by the UK Faculty of Public Health and, the same year, a scientometric analysis in the journal Health Research Policy & Systems identified me as the most productive researcher in global health systems research. In its 2015 listing I was included in the Thomson Reuters list of the top 1% most cited researchers worldwide and, the same year, I was awarded the Donabedian International Award.

You can read more about me in my Lancet profile, on Wikipedia, and in BMJ Confidential

My latest books are

a) Evidence Review. Drawing light from the pandemic: a new strategy for health and sustainable development

b) with Anna Sagan, Erin Webb and others. Health systems resilience during COVID-19: Lessons for building back better

 Selected podcasts include:

TiPH Podcast on Training in Public Health, 2023

Money, power, and health, with Nason Maani

My video interviews include:

Health in Time of Transition

The health effects of austerity in Europe

The global rise of non-communicable diseases

The challenges facing public health today

The challenge of universal health coverage

Health effects of austerity (interview with the Western Australian)

Fortes lecture (Stockholm, March 2016) on sustaining solidarity in Europe

WRR (Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy) The Hague, December 2016

Fireside chat with Mario Monti, 2023 WHO Conference on health and the wellbeing economy 

You can follow me on Twitter at @martinmckee