Academic Reference Group

Azeem Majeed is Professor of Primary Care and Public Health and Head of the Department of Primary Care and Public Health at Imperial College London where he leads a team of around 170 people. He is also Director of the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration NW London, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and an NIHR Senior Investigator. He is an international leader in primary care and public health research. His academic work has focused on developing the evidence base for primary care and public health policies using rigorous analyses of large-scale health databases.

His leadership roles in the National Institute for Health and Care Research and his influential work at the UK Office for National Statistics have helped shape health policies in areas such as health surveillance, prevention and chronic disease management. With more than 224,000 citations and a H-Index of 140, he is the most highly cited primary care researcher globally. Azeem has over 20 years of experience as a GP partner in an inner London general practice and continues to work as an NHS GP and Consultant in Public Health in addition to his academic role.

Dr David Ashby is an executive leader in healthcare improvement, transformation and analytics, with over 20 years’ experience of health information strategy, data, analytics, strategic partnerships, research and innovation. He is currently a Director within the Transformation Directorate of NHS England – specialising in digital, data and analytics, and leading the Clinical and Improvement Analytics function.

Since 2016 David has held leadership roles with NHS central bodies focusing on analytics and digital developments to drive national improvement and transformation programmes. Previously, from 2007, he worked at the UK’s leading commercial health information and analytics provider, Dr Foster – including as the Executive Director of Products & Services. David also has board-level experience as a Non-Executive within London Clinical Commissiong Groups (CCGs) and continues to work with the academic sector – including as Chair of the advisory board for a major research council Big Data investment held by UCL, Oxford, Leeds and Liverpool universities.

David has a PhD from the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at UCL, and an MSc from University of Toronto, where he studied spatial statistics and inner city public health under a Commonwealth Fellowship. He has authored numerous papers in international peer-reviewed journals in the fields of geodemographics, neighbourhood analysis, crime/policing, and population health.

Njeru Njagi is Associate Professor in Quantitative Analysis of Breast Cancer Screening at the Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick. With a background in Mathematics, Njeruobtained his PhD in Biostatistics at Hasselt University in Belgium, and worked with the Inequalities in Cancer Outcomes Network at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in Cancer Research UK-funded studies on inequalities in cancer care and cancer outcomes in England.

An expert in analysis of population-based cancer registry and routine electronic health records data, he is Faculty for the international biennial Corsican Summer School on Modern Methods in Biostatistics and Epidemiology in France.

Prof Gina Awoko Higginbottom is a nurse, midwife and health visitor. Formerly a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Research Chair in Ethnicity and Health at the University of Alberta, Canada. Now Professor Emerita (Ethnicity and Community Health, University of Nottingham).  She holds a substantial track record of publication and substantial grant acquisition in the UK and Canada; leading externally funded grants as Principal Investigator, (CIHR) & National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).  Her research portfolio is focused on ethnicity and health, with substantial dedication to maternal and neonatal health.  She is Co-Director of the International Collaboration on Community Health Care Nursing and Research (ICCHNR) and Founder and President of the Alliance of Diverse Academics in Nursing and Midwifery. Gina is a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and Adjunct Professor at the University of Alberta, Canada.

Jason Arday is Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education, and a Professorial Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge. He was formerly a Guest Editor on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme and listed fourth on the prestigious Shaw Trust Disability Power 100 in 2023. Professor Arday has previously held the position of Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Glasgow, School of Education; Associate Professor in Sociology at Durham University in the Department of Sociology; and Deputy Executive Dean for People and Culture in the Faculty of Social Science and Health.

He is a Visiting Professor at The Ohio State University in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, University of Glasgow in the School of Education, and an Honorary Professor at Durham University in the Department of Sociology. He is a Patron of the Adult Literacy Trust (ALT) and Get Further. He is also a Trustee of the British Sociological Association (BSA). Jason sits on the NHS Race and Health Observatory Academic Reference Group and the ITV Cultural Advisory Council.

Jeremy Dawson is Professor of Health Management at the University of Sheffield, where he works jointly between the Institute of Work Psychology at Sheffield University Management School and the School of Medicine and Population Health.

His research includes a range of topics in the areas of health services management, team working, and research methodology. He has led several large-scale projects in the NHS, particularly focussing on team working, diversity and discrimination, staff engagement and well-being and their links with patient outcomes, and he led the team that ran the NHS national staff survey between 2003 and 2010. His other research interests include team and organisational climate, work group processes, and statistical methodology, particularly around the testing and probing of interaction effects, and questionnaire design.

He is a statistician by background, and teaches a wide variety of subjects in the fields of statistics and research methods, as well as researching in these areas. He has published over 100 papers in refereed academic journals, as well as one book and several book chapters. He is an editorial board member of six journals, and an Associate Editor of the journal Organizational Research Methods, and of the Journal of Business and Psychology.

Kamlesh Khunti is Professor of Primary Care Diabetes and Vascular Medicine at the University of Leicester, UK. He is Director of Leicester Diabetes Centre, Director of the UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) in Applied Research Collaborations (ARC) East Midlands, Director of Centre for Ethnic Health Research and Director of The Real-World Evidence Unit. His Leicester Diabetes Centre (LDC) has been accredited as an International Diabetes Federation (IDF) Centre of Excellence for Diabetes Care for the eighth year running. He leads a programme of work on cardiometabolic diseases and multiple long-term conditions (MLTC).

He was recently been appointed as Director of the first NIHR Global Health Research Centre for Multiple Long-Term Conditions and Co-lead for the Cross NIHR Collaboration for Multiple Long-Term Conditions. He is the national NIHR ARC Lead for Multimorbidity and the leads the national training programme for MLTCs. He was a member of UK Governments Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and Chair of the SAGE Ethnicity Sub-panel.

He has published over 1500 peer-reviewed articles. (Link to full list of Professor Khunti’s publications via Google Scholar) He has won numerous awards nationally and internationally including ‘Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Award for Excellence in Medical Research, India’. He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2022 New Year’s Honour’s List for services to health.

Professor Laia Becares is a social epidemiologist interested in studying the pathways by which the discrimination and marginalisation of people and places lead to social and health inequalities across the life course, with a specific focus on racism and heteronormativity as systems of oppression.

Michael West CBE is Senior Visiting Fellow at The King’s Fund, London and Professor of Organisational Psychology at Lancaster University, Visiting Professor at University College, Dublin, and Emeritus Professor at Aston University, where he was formerly Executive Dean of Aston Business School.

He graduated from the University of Wales in 1973 and was awarded a PhD in 1977 for research on the psychology of meditation. He has authored, edited and co-edited 20 books and has published more than 200 articles in scientific and practitioner publications on teamwork, innovation, leadership, and culture, particularly in healthcare. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, the American Psychological Association (APA), the Academy of Social Sciences and the International Association of Applied Psychologists. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow and an Honorary Fellow of Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland, Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery. He is a member of the Advisory Council of The Global Compassion Coalition and of the Advisory Board of the Center for Compassionate Leadership.

He assisted in developing the national People Plan for the National Health Service in England focused on compassionate and inclusive leadership and in Northern Ireland in developing the Collective and Compassionate Leadership Strategy for Health and Social Care (2017). He also led the NHS National Staff Survey development and initial implementation. He is supporting Health Education and Improvement Wales to develop the national health and care compassionate leadership strategy for health and social care. He co-chaired with Dame Denise Coia, the two-year inquiry on behalf of the UK General Medical Council into the mental health and well-being of doctors Caring for Doctors, Caring for Patients (2019). He led the review for The King’s Fund (commissioned by the RCN Foundation) into the mental health and well-being of nurses and midwives across the UK, The Courage of Compassion: Supporting Nurses and Midwives to Deliver High Quality Care (2020). His latest book (2021) is Compassionate leadership: Sustaining wisdom, humanity and presence in health and social care (London: Swirling Leaf Press). He supports many health care and other public sector organisations internationally to develop compassionate, high quality care cultures.

He was appointed a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List 2020 for services to compassion and innovation in healthcare.

Professor Shakur is an academic clinician having trained in medicine and cardiology in Cambridge, Oxford and London before doing his PhD as a Wellcome trust scholar at the University of Cambridge at the Sanger Centre on modelling inherited heart diseases and novel drug discovery for precision cardiology.

He undertook work at George church lab in Harvard and continued in the US at MIT before returning to the UK. He is Professor of Genomics and Precision medicine and the founding director of the BIG Unit (Brighton Integrative Genomics Unit)  and the UK center for precision health and translational medicine based in Brighton and Sussex.

He is keen to promote equity in genomics for all communities and a keen speaker on how to utilise genomics for risk stratification clinically and for a wider access to the benefits of precision medicine for all.

Rutendo Muzambi is an epidemiologist at Imperial College London working on inequalities in sickle cell disease. She has vast experience of using large-scale routinely collected electronic health records in the UK. Rutendo holds a Master of Pharmacy degree, underpinned by several years of professional experience working as a community pharmacist, and a masters in Epidemiology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. In 2018, Rutendo undertook a PhD in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, during which she investigated the association between common infections and dementia. Her first post-doctoral research focused on inequalities in statin use for the primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease.

Dr. Ruth Agbakoba is a distinguished leader in implementation science, academic research, healthcare leadership, and digital health innovation. Her research, cited in the top 10% of its field, has influenced global digital health policy. With a First-Class Honors Degree in Biomedical Informatics, a Master’s in Health Informatics, and a PhD in Digital Health Innovation, her academic achievements are exceptional.

Her work has gained national and international recognition, shaping healthcare in the UK, USA, and Canada. She has presented at conferences such as the Kings Fund Digital Health Congress, IEEE International Health Informatics Conference, and others. Dr. Ruth’s accolades include the 1st Place Young IBM Scientist of the Year Award and a Shuri Network Digital Fellowship. She has served as a board advisor for the Health Data Research UK 10,000 Black Interns Programme and on the editorial board of the Journal of Informatics for Health and Social Care.

As an Honorary Research Fellow at University College London, she advanced Medical AI and Natural Language Processing. At NYU, she completed an NIH-funded Post-Doctoral Innovation Fellowship, leading the development of clinical decision support systems to improve outcomes and antibiotic stewardship.

Dr. Ruth champions digital health equity, addressing healthcare disparities through innovative technology. As a 2024 UK Delegate to UN Women, she contributed to solutions enhancing healthcare access for women and girls. She co-founded #BlackInDataWeek, increasing Black representation in health data science, recognized globally by Google and HDR UK.

Currently, Dr. Ruth serves as a Strategic Advisory Board Member at the Centre for Digital Innovations in Health and Social Care, University of Bradford, and a senior leader in the NHS. She is committed to aligning research, policy, and practice to address ethnic inequalities and improve healthcare outcomes.