Professor Steven Cummins
Professor of Population Health
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
15-17 Tavistock Place
London
WC1H 9SH
United Kingdom
Steven, a geographer (BSc) with training in epidemiology (MSc) and public health (PhD), joined LSHTM in 2012 after holding posts at Queen Mary, University of London and the MRC Social & Public Health Sciences Unit in Glasgow.
AT LSHTM he is Co-Director of the Population Health Innovation Lab and Lead/PI of LSHTM's membership of the NIHR School for Public Health Research. He is former Head of the Department of Public Health, Environments & Society (2022-2025). He has also been Chair of the LSHTM/MRC Strategic Skills Development Fellowships Scheme, Theme Lead for Complex Public Health Interventions, LSHTM-SGUL MRC Doctoral Training Partnership and member of the LSHTM REF2021 Strategic Advisory Group.
Research interests include the social and environmental determinants of population health and health inequalities; evaluation of complex population health interventions, complex systems thinking, use of natural experiments in evidence-based policy, and the research-policy interface. Much of this work is focused on understanding impacts of food retail system transformation on healthy and sustainable population diets, particularly the impact of technology-driven changes (delivery, advertising/media, retail, sustainability). Other projects are focused on green infrastructure and health and the physical activity and environmental benefits of active transportation. His team is increasingly making use of large-scale consumer and public secondary data, and exploring machine-learning and agent-based modelling approaches to better understand and intervene in food and transport systems.
Externally he serves as Panel Chair for the NIHR Doctoral Fellowships Programme, Member of the Food Standards Agency Science Council, Member of the Editorial Boards of Health & Place and the Journal of Urban Health, and acts as a Mentor for NIHR and the Society for Social Medicine & Population Health. Previously he was a member of The Movember Foundation's Global Advisory Committee, the CRUK Prevention Panel, the NIHR Public Health Research Programme Funding Panel and the MRC Skills Development Fellowship Panel.
His research has been supported by a wide range of funders including ESRC, Department of Health, MRC, NIHR, NIH, The Leverhulme Trust and The Wellcome Trust. His work has been recognised by the award of a Phillip Leverhulme Prize, the Association for the Study of Obesity Young Achiever Award and he is a two time recepient (with others) of the European Society for Prevention Research Presidents Award.
Affiliations
Centres
Teaching
I also supervise MSc tutees and a number of PhD students. Current PhD students include Amanda Karapici, Robert Greener, Anamika Basu and Karen Ulian.
Research
The group has particular expertise in diet and physical activity and maternal and child health and are using findings from our research to test and evaluate social and environmental policies and interventions that have the potential to improve health at the population level. Current major projects include MANDALA and SALIENT (two large-scale consortia investigating the health and sustainability impacts of food system interventions); CLEVER (an ADRUK-funded project that creates an e-cohort of 14 million children to look and the environment and childrens health) and COPPER (co-designing economic policies for for healthy People and Planet)
To achieve this the team works collaboratively with leading researchers, policymakers and practitioners locally, nationally and internationally.
In addition, over the years PHI-Lab has been lucky to host the recipients of a number of personal research and training fellowships from MRC, Wellcome Trust, CIHR and NIHR. We are always happy to support applications to these schemes from strong candidates.
PHI-Lab is also affiliated to the NIHR School of Public Health Research as LSHTM (SPHR@L), the LSHTM Centre for Evaluation, and the LSHTM Centre for Global Non-communicable Disease and the LSHTM Centre for Climate Change & Planetary Health.
Selected Publications
