People

Peter Rice, chair of the Institute of Alcohol Studies, is an addiction psychiatrist based in Scotland. He graduated from Glasgow University and his post graduate training was in Glasgow, Perth and Dundee. He has been chair of Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems, a project of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, since 2012. He was one of the group of doctors from the Scottish Royal Colleges who founded SHAAP in 2006 to raise awareness of the extent and diversity of alcohol related harm and promote effective policy solutions initially within Scotland and subsequently in the UK, Europe and internationally.

He is:

• Chair of Tayside Council on Alcohol (a local alcohol charity)
• Alcohol policy lead for RCPsych (UK)
• A member of the UK Alcohol Health Alliance,
• Vice chair of the European Alcohol Policy Alliance (Eurocare)
• Board Member of the Institute of Alcohol Studies (UK)
• Consultant to WHO Europe.
• He is past chair of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland and of the RCPsych Trainees Committee.

From 1989-2013 he worked in an NHS Alcohol Problems Service seeing patients on his own caseload and working with colleagues and partner agencies. He applied population health principles to his clinical service with a focus on prevention, early intervention and care pathways and this led to increasing involvement in formal policy work particularly since 2013. His work with the Royal College of Psychiatrists focused on the impact of mental and behavioural health to population health and health inequalities.

He has researched and published on health information and communication, brief interventions, on counselling relationship in alcohol misuse treatment as well as on more traditional medical topics such as cell changes in oral cancer. He has published in the British Medical Journal, the Lancet, the British Journal of Psychiatry, Addicition and Alcohol and Alcoholism on alcohol harm and policy.

He was part of the SHAAP group who developed the proposal for Minimum Unit Pricing in 2007, which was adopted by the Scottish Government, became law in 2012 and introduced in 2018. He is currently involved in the process of implementation of Minimum Unit Price in Scotland and other countries, and other prevention work in Scotland, the UK and elsewhere in Europe.

A minister of religion and an academic (retired but still active), Janet is vice chair of the Institute of Alcohol Studies. After 10 years with the police service and a brief career in personnel with a national retailer, she trained for the Baptist ministry through Bristol University.

Before ordination she went on to Oxford where she studied for her D.Phil. From 1989 to January 1994 she served a Baptist Church near Bristol and taught Old Testament part-time at her old theological college.

She then joined Westminster College, Cambridge and transferred into United Reformed Church ministry in 1996. She retired in 2016 but still remains active in the church and university as a minister and teacher. She currently serves as a Trustee of three other charitable organisations connected with the church and higher education.

Michael Carr enjoyed a long career in senior management posts in Higher Education, including as Registrar of the University of Liverpool from 1990 to 2004 and as the inaugural executive director of the Russell Group of Universities until 2007.

Following retirement from Higher Education, Michael spent a number of years as chairman of a large Foundation Hospital NHS Trust in the North West of England.

His commitment to the Institute of Alcohol Studies builds upon that of his father, Douglas Carr, who was a founding member of the Institute and a lifelong member of the Temperance Movement.

Michael is a former chair of the Institute of Alcohol Studies.

Stephen has worked for the Methodist Church in Ireland, Britain and Sri Lanka in a variety of roles including church minister, principal of Cliff College and Director of Global Relations.

He is currently Superintendent of the North Western Methodist district in Ireland.

Linda Bauld is ‘Bruce and John Usher Chair in Public Health’ in the Usher Institute, College of Medicine, University of Edinburgh.

She also holds the CRUK/BUPA chair in Behavioural Research for Cancer Prevention, a part-time secondment to Cancer Research UK.

Linda has a background in applied policy research and for the past 15 years her research interests have centred on the evaluation of public health interventions. She has conducted studies on drug and alcohol use, inequalities in health and, most notably, on tobacco control and smoking cessation.

She is a former scientific adviser on tobacco control to the UK Government and recently led the development of an independent alcohol strategy for the UK, Health First, which was published in March 2013.

Alice Wiseman has been Director of Public Health in Gateshead since May 2016 and registered with the UK Public Health Register since December 2009.

Alice is passionate about improving health and well-being with a particular focus on tackling the unacceptable inequalities faced by some communities.

Alice has a contract with the Clinical Research Network for half a day a week. Research priorities in Gateshead have focussed on opportunities to gain a better understanding of the lived experience of, and impact of Government policy on, people in some of the most disadvantaged communities.

Alice has recently been elected to the Board of ADPH and is also one of the DPH leads for addiction and inequality.

Gillian Shorter is a Reader in Clinical Psychology at the Drug and Alcohol Research Network in Queen’s University Belfast and has been a researcher in the alcohol and other drug use field for over 18 years.

Her work includes alcohol brief interventions, hazardous drinking and patterns of consumption, long-term alcohol problems, polydrug use, and harm reduction. She works to involve experts by experience in policymaking and is a firm believer in the key role of people with lived/living experience in driving timely, empowering, and appropriate policy change. She also works to understand the complex interplay of evidence production and use (including effectiveness/efficacy studies and systematic reviews) and public opinion on policy. Gillian has expertise in cross border policy making and the sharing of best practice across country boundaries.

Since 2014, Gillian has been research advisor to the New Strategic Direction in Alcohol and Drugs Policy Steering Group in the Department of Health (Stormont). She is also a research advisor to the North South Alcohol Policy Advisory Group convened by the two Chief Medical Officers in Northern Ireland/Republic of Ireland and led by the Institute of Public Health in Ireland to facilitate alcohol policy at an all-Ireland level. She sits on Committees for Faculty of Public Health, Kettil Bruun Society, and the International Network for Brief Interventions in Alcohol and Drugs.

Gillian chairs the IAS Small Grants Scheme Research Review Committee.

Gerard Hastings is the first UK professor of Social Marketing and founder/director of the Institute for Social Marketing and Centre for Tobacco Control Research at Stirling and the Open University. He researches the applicability of marketing principles like consumer orientation, branding and strategic planning to the solution of health and social problems. He also conducts critical marketing research into the impact of potentially damaging marketing, such as alcohol, tobacco and fast food promotion.

Key achievements:

• • Author of Europe’s only social marketing textbook: Social Marketing: Why Should the Devil have all the Best Tunes?

• • Published over a hundred refereed papers in major journals such as the British Medical Journal, the European Journal of Marketing, the International Journal of Advertising, the Journal of Macromarketing, Psychology and Marketing, Social Marketing Quarterly

• • Taught about social marketing on four continents (Europe, Asia, Africa and N America)

• • Led the research team that conducted the first systematic review on the impact of food advertising on childhood obesity. The effects it uncovered were subsequently confirmed by the Institute of Medicine and have entered the canon of public health evidence

• • Led the research teams that have unpicked the relationship between tobacco marketing and youth smoking (principal funder CRUK) and alcohol marketing and youth drinking (NPRI)

• • Chaired the advisory board for the European Commission’s (and the world’s biggest) anti-smoking campaign (www.help-eu.com); a rare example of a successful public health brand

• • Regular advisor to the Scottish, UK and European parliaments and to the World Health Organisation

• • The first Andreasen Scholar in Social Marketing (1997)

• • Awarded the OBE for services to health care (2009)

Jonathan Shepherd CBE FMedSci is professor of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, founder of the Violence Research Group, and co-founder of the Crime and Security Research Institute at Cardiff University.

His research on clinical decisions, community violence and alcohol harms have had substantial impact on practice, policy and legislation. Prompted by his discoveries, he led the development of a prototype Community Safety Partnership which was used as a model in the Crime and Disorder Act which mandated the creation of such partnerships across Great Britain.

He initiated and developed the pioneering Universities’ Police Science Institute in Wales, and the information sharing “Cardiff Model” for violence prevention which was adopted by the WHO in 2005 and has been implemented across the UK and in cites in the United States, Australia and other countries. He also developed a comprehensive care pathway for people harmed by violence and led the development of new standards published by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine and the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

His proposal for an independent professional body for policing, was taken up by the UK government and the new College of Policing was launched in 2013, underpinned by primary legislation. He was instrumental in the formation of the national Probation Institute in 2014. 

His surveys, laboratory work and field experiments on glass injury resulted in a switch to toughened glassware and polycarbonate alternatives in the UK licensed trade. His research and advocacy prompted the historic first National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) technology appraisal and guidance in 2000.

He won the 2008 Stockholm Criminology Prize (the first UK recipient of what The Times described as “the equivalent of a Nobel prize”) and his research group won Cardiff University a 2009 Queen’s Prize. 

He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, reflecting his contributions to alcohol harm reduction and traumatic stress services; of the College of Emergency Medicine; and of the Faculty of Public Health at the Royal College of Physicians. He has served as council member and trustee of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, which awarded him an honorary FRCS in 2012, and as vice chair of the national charity Victim Support. 

He contributed to the Domestic Violence (Wales) Bill and spoke for the NHS at the 2012 launch of the white paper. He initiated the professions summit series including the 2013 summit on evidence informed practice chaired by Lord O’Donnell. He initiated and drafted the Evidence Declaration signed by 27 professional bodies at the Royal Society in 2017 and also initiated the new Bazalgette Professorship for research translation in public health, first awarded in 2019.

He is a member of the Home Office Science Advisory Council and the What Works Council at the UK Cabinet Office.

Petra Meier is professor of Public Health at the MRC/CSO Social Science and Public Health Unit at the University of Glasgow, where she leads a programme on systems science in public health.

She was previously head of the Sheffield Alcohol Research Group, whose research has been influential in informing current debate on alcohol policy. Her team developed the Sheffield Alcohol Policy Model, which has provided a key evidence base for debates around minimum unit pricing in the UK and beyond.

Petra studied psychology at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, before completing an MSc in Research in Child Health (University of Hertfordshire), followed by a PhD in Epidemiology & Health Sciences at the University of Manchester. Her research interests include health inequalities, the social determinants of health, alcohol policies and their effectiveness and the determinants of substance use, misuse and addiction.

A graduate in Modern History from Oxford University, Crispin Acton joined the Department of Health (and Social Security, as it was then named) in 1976, retiring in 2017, adopting a specialist interest in alcohol policy over the years.

During his time working on alcohol policy, Crispin became involved in commissioning work on minimum unit pricing and taxation from Sheffield University’s School of Health & Related Research in 2007-08, worked on aspects of the Public Health Responsibility Deal and alcohol, notably labelling, and headed the Department of Health (DH) team which contributed to work on the Government’s Alcohol Strategy in 2012, as well as the proposals on minimum unit pricing in England developed between 2012 and 2013.

Crispin has also worked with the Scottish Government as part of the UK Government effort to help defend its legislation on alcohol minimum unit pricing in litigation brought by the Scotch whisky industry, working with legal advisers.

Most recently, he provided much of the DH secretariat work for the development of the UK Chief Medical Officers’ new alcohol guidelines, issued in January 2016, working closely with two expert groups and the chief medical officer for England.

Crispin studied for a MSc in Public Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine from 2017, graduating in 2019.

Jeff Collin PhD is a professor of Global Health Policy and head of Social Policy at the University of Edinburgh.

A political scientist, his research focuses on globalisation, health governance and corporate strategies to influence public policy.

He was a member of the World Health Organisation expert group monitoring tobacco industry influence on policy, is a member of the tobacco advisory group of Cancer Research UK, and is a co-investigator in the UK Centre on Tobacco and Alcohol Studies.

Recent publications examine WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, conflict of interest in international health philanthropy, policy coherence in global health, and UK Government support for the global expansion of the alcohol industry.

David Jernigan PhD is a professor in the Department of Health Law, Policy and Management at the Boston University School of Public Health, and a senior policy advisor to CityHealth, an initiative of the de Beaumont Foundation. He previously directed the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) and was an associate professor in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

He continues as an advisor to the Maryland Collaborative to Reduce College Drinking and Related Problems, a statewide effort involving 15 institutions of higher education committed to reducing alcohol-related problems on campus and in the surrounding communities. Dr. Jernigan also serves on the boards of Behavioral Health System Baltimore and the Global Alcohol Policy Alliance.

He has written more than 120 peer-reviewed journal articles, co-authored three books and monographs, and contributed chapters to six books on alcohol issues. He has served as an advisor to the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO) and was the principal author of WHO’s first Global Status Report on Alcohol and Global Status Report on Alcohol and Youth, and co-author of Alcohol in the Developing World: A Public Health Perspective and Media Advocacy and Public Health: Power for Prevention.

Dr Phil Hadfield is director of www.philhadfield.co.uk, an independent research consultancy based in Leeds, UK. Phil’s work addresses problem-solving and cost vs benefit analysis for clients in community safety, public health, urban cultural planning, place management, policing and regulatory matters, with special reference to evening and night-time economies (ENTEs).

Phil has a background in academia and Research Council / NGO-funded projects. He currently holds advisory board / steering group roles at the University of Leeds, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and for the City of Bordeaux. He is also on the International Editorial Board of the journal Contemporary Drug Problems.

Phil has advised many UK local authorities, notably the City of Westminster, Camden, Hackney, Liverpool, and the City of London on their licensing policies, together with the City of Sydney, ‘Open Sydney’ Programme and has worked on three EC-funded Pan-European Research Programmes.

He is the author and co-author of some of the leading books and research articles on the ENTE, including: Bar Wars: Contesting the Night in Contemporary British Cities and Nightlife and Crime: Social Order and Governance in International Perspective, both published by Oxford University Press. Phil drinks too much coffee, drinks alcohol in moderation and tries to keep in reasonable shape.

Aveek Bhattacharya is Research Director at the Social Market Foundation, a cross-party think tank in Westminster. Prior to that he was Senior Policy Analyst at the Institute of Alcohol Studies between 2015 and 2020.

His alcohol research focuses on pricing policies, as well as the impact of alcohol on the economy. His work was instrumental in the UK Government’s decision to levy a tax on white cider in 2017, and its reforms to the structure of alcohol taxes in 2021. His analysis has influenced our understanding of the alcohol industry’s dependence on harmful drinking, the reasons for falling consumption among young people and the impact on jobs and income of reducing alcohol sales.

Aveek holds a PhD in Social Policy from the London School of Economics, and is editor of the book Political Philosophy in a Pandemic.