Professor Michael Kelly

I am Senior Visiting Fellow in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge. Between 2005 and 2014, when I retired from the NHS, I was the Director of the Centre for Public Health at NICE.  At NICE I led the teams producing public health guidelines. I have advised the House of Commons Health Select Committee and been a witness before parliamentary committees on several occasions. I have chaired committees for MRC, ESRC, the Foods Standards Agency, PHE and OHID. From 2005 to 2007 I directed the methodology work stream for the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Commission on the Social Determinants of Health. I have a continuing interest in health inequalities and am pursuing research in Cambridge on this topic. My other research interests include end of life care, the methods and philosophy of evidence-based medicine, prevention of heart disease, health related behaviour change, the causes of non-communicable disease, dental public health, transport and health, community health initiatives and the sociology of chronic illness.

I read Social Sciences, specialising in Sociology at the University of York, did a master’s degree in Sociology at the University of Leicester, and did my PhD in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Dundee. 

Before I worked at NICE, I had been the Director of Research and Information at the Health Development Agency.  Prior to moving into the NHS I had had an academic career with appointments at the Universities of Leicester, Abertay, Glasgow, and Greenwich, where I was the Head of the School of Social Sciences. 

I was awarded the Alwyn Smith Prize from the Faculty of Public Health in 2010, and made Honorary Doctor of the University, by the University of York in July 2014.  I received a Lifetime Achievement Award for Public Health from Glasgow Caledonian University in November 2017.  I am a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health, Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, and Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. I am Honorary Professor in Population Health, Health Services Research and Primary Care within the School of Dentistry, at the University of Manchester, and Honorary Professor at Glasgow Caledonian University.