Kamran Abbasi
The BMJ, Editor-in-Chief
Kamran Abbasi FRCP Edin Lon is the Editor-in-Chief of The BMJ, one of the world’s most influential medical journals this year.
Previously Executive Editor of The BMJ, since 2016 Kamran led the journal’s content team and international growth strategy. During this time, he contributed to the expansion of international editions of The BMJ.
A qualified doctor, Kamran studied medicine at Leeds University and joined BMJ after postgraduate training in general medicine.
Huseyin Naci
Associate Professor of Health Policy London School of Economics and Political Science
Huseyin Naci is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He conducts research and teaches on health care policy and practice in Europe and the United States. Huseyin serves as the Director of LSE’s Executive MSc programme in Health Economics, Outcomes and Management in Clinical Sciences. He is also Deputy Director of LSE Health.
His research evaluates the quantity and quality of the evidence base underpinning the approval, adoption, reimbursement, and use of new prescription drugs in Europe and the United States.
Huseyin has a PhD from the Department of Social Policy at the LSE and a Master’s in Health Sciences from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He was previously a Fellow in Pharmaceutical Policy Research (2012-13) and a Pyle Fellow in Population Medicine (2013-14) at the Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute. In 2018-19, he was the recipient of the UK Harkness Fellowship in Health Care Policy and Practice, based at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
He is an Advisor to the Analysis section of The BMJ. He is also a member of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Medical Technologies Advisory Committee.
Dr Helen Macdonald
Editor Integrity Research / Clinical Editor - The BMJ
Helen Macdonald graduated from Barts and The London Queen Mary’s School of Medicine Dentistry, London (2006). She has worked as an editor at The BMJ since 2008 (beginning as an editorial registrar). Currently, she is the UK research editor, continues to develop The BMJ‘s Rapid Recommendations series, and champions aspects of our campaigns on Better Evidence and Too Much Medicine. She has previously headed the analysis and education sections of the journals, and supported the Student BMJ’s editorial team.
After two years a junior doctor in London, she split her time between The BMJ and GP training until she qualified as a General Practitioner in 2014. Along the way she also did a BA in Medical Journalism (first class honours, University of Westminster) and MSc in Evidence-Based Healthcare (distinction, University of Oxford). It is blending all of these skills together, to communicate clear and helpful information for discussions about health and healthcare, which drives her work at The BMJ.
Cat Chetfield
Director, HSR UK
Cat Chatfield is the Director of Health Services Research UK, a membership charity which represents the collective voice of health service and improvement researchers, based at the Nuffield Trust think tank in London. She is also Editor in Chief of the National Institute for Health and Social Care Research (NIHR) Journals Library. Previously Cat was a clinical editor at The BMJ, with varied roles including Head of Education and Research Integrity Editor. Cat started at The BMJ as their quality improvement editor, leading the creation of a series of articles on the science of improvement in collaboration with the Health Foundation. She led The BMJ’s work to support clinician wellbeing during the pandemic, including co-hosting The BMJ’s wellbeing podcast. She trained as a doctor in Brighton and London, was a Darzi clinical leadership fellow, and practised as a GP before moving to work full time at BMJ.
Dr Elizabeth Robertson
Director of Research, Diabetes UK
Dr Elizabeth Robertson is the Director of Research for Diabetes UK. Before joining Diabetes UK, Elizabeth was the first Director of Research for Breast Cancer Now (formed from the merger of Breakthrough Breast Cancer and Breast Cancer Campaign).
Previous roles include Director of Operations at Cancer Research UK and Dean of the Graduate Research School at Teesside University. Elizabeth completed her PhD at Queen Mary, University of London and Sloan Masters in Leadership and Strategy from London Business School.
Elizabeth is a Trustee of the Association of Medical Research Charities and the Quadram Institute Bioscience and a former Trustee of King’s College Hospital Charity and the national volunteering charity, TimeBank.
Follow Elizabeth on Twitter @ERobertson02
Elaine Williams
Chief Executive Office, National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR)
Elaine is Deputy Chief Executive Officer at the NIHR Evaluation and Studies Coordinating Centre (NETSCC).
Elaine leads the end-to-end delivery for a number of NIHR research programmes, including identification of research questions for commissioned workstreams, research funding, project monitoring, and the publication of results, supporting dissemination and demonstrating impact. Elaine also has responsibility for the delivery of NIHR Global Health Research activity within NETSCC.
Before joining the NIHR in 2008, Elaine worked for the commercial sector in strategic and management roles for a large international organisation. She then decided to change direction and trained as an occupational therapist, working within NHS acute medicine at Southampton General Hospital.
Paul Wicks, Ph.D
Independent Consultant
Paul Wicks, Ph.D., is an independent consultant who helps life sciences companies generate evidence, revenue, and awareness. Prior to consulting, for 13 years, he led innovation at PatientsLikeMe, an online community for over 750,000 people living with medical conditions. Paul has over 180 peer-reviewed publications including multiple decentralized trials, patient-reported outcomes, applications of medical AI, and a dose-response curve for friendship. He sits on the editorial boards of the BMJ, BMC Medicine, JMIR, Digital Biomarkers, and The Patient. His Ph.D. at the Institute of Psychiatry (King’s College London) explored cognition and neuroimaging in ALS, with a postdoc in psychological consequences of Parkinson’s disease.
Nazrul Islam
Physician-Epidemiologist, University of Oxford
Following his medical training as a general practitioner, Nazrul received graduate degrees in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Harvard University and the University of British Columbia.
He moved to the University of Cambridge as a Research Associate to work on randomised controlled trials and large observational studies on cardiometabolic disorders.
His current work at the University of Oxford involves a combination of research methodology, medical statistics, and machine learning to examine inequalities in disease burden at population level using integrated electronic health records and large prospective health studies. He is also a Research Editor at the BMJ.