Sir Michael Marmot MBBS, MPH, PhD, FRCP, FFPHM,FMedSci#

Marital status: married, three children

Education

• University of Sydney
• University of Berkeley PhD

Positions

• Director, UCL International Institute for Society and Health
• MRC Research Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London
• Chairman, Commission on Social Determinants of Health
• Chairman, Department of Health Scientific Reference Group
• Chairman, WCRF/AICR Food, Nutrition and the Prevention of Cancer report

Biographical Details:

Michael Marmot has led a research group on health inequalities for the past 30 years. He is Principal Investigator of the Whitehall Studies of British civil servants, investigating explanations for the striking inverse social gradient in morbidity and mortality. He leads the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) and is engaged in several international research efforts on the social determinants of health. He chairs the Department of Health Scientific Reference Group on tackling health inequalities and is an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy. He was a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution for six years. In 2000 he was knighted by Her Majesty The Queen for services to Epidemiology and understanding health inequalities. Internationally acclaimed, Professor Marmot is a Vice President of the Academia Europaea, a Foreign Associate Member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM), and the Chair of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health set up by the World Health Organization in 2005. He won the Balzan Prize for Epidemiology in 2004, gave the Harveian Oration in October 2006 and won the William B. Graham Prize for Health Services Research in 2008.

Research Interests:

Marmot's research has been devoted to establishing the chain of disease causation from the social environment, through psychosocial influences, biological pathways, to risk of cardiovascular and other diseases. In studies of Japanese migrants to the USA and migrants to Britain from a number of countries, he showed that disease rates change. The longer the migrant has been in the new country, the more closely rates of disease resemble those of the new country. A specific object of investigation was the high rates of cardiovascular disease and diabetes among immigrants from the Indian subcontinent. This defied the usual explanations. Marmot showed it was related to the metabolic syndrome related to insulin resistance and the resultant lipid disturbances. This same set of biological mechanisms proved important to the inverse social gradient in cardiovascular disease in Britain. Marmot's studies of civil servants showed that the lower the status, the higher was the risk. Plasma fibrinogen and the metabolic syndrome mediate much of this excess risk. Marmot produced evidence linking low control at work to the increased risk of cardiovascular disease. He and his colleagues have good evidence that psychosocial stress pathways are involved in the metabolic disturbances observed. It is these pathways that provide the most promising explanation for the new phenomenon that they are investigating: the dramatic increase in cardiovascular disease and drop in life expectancy that occurred in Russia and other former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. A new thrust of the research is its application to an ageing population. Professor Marmot teaches on the new MSc Health and Society : Social Epidemiology course.

Collaborative work:

Marmot is Principal Investigator in a number of well-funded collaborative studies, including the Whitehall II Study:

Health and Social Upheaval researches the gap in morbidity between countries in East and Western European countries with Dr Martin Bobak, Dr Hynek Pikhart, Dr Anne Peasey and Dr Amanda Nicholson (UCL);

Professor Denny Vågero (Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm), Dr Clyde Hertzman (University of British Columbia) and Professor Andrea Cornia (University of Florence). The HAPIEE multi-cohort study researches the health of societies in transition with Dr Sofia Malyutina (Novosibirsk), Dr Andrzej Pajak (Krakow) and Dr Ruzena Kubinova (Czech Republic).

ELSA (English Longitudinal Study of Ageing) investigates factors that underlie inequalities in health in the elderly, successful ageing and healthy retirement with Professor James Nazroo, Professor Richard Blundell, Professor James Banks and colleagues at the Institute of Fiscal Studies, the National Centre for Social Research and University of Cambridge.

The annual Health Survey for England and Health Survey for Scotland monitor the nation's health in collaboration with Dr Paola Primatesta (UCL) and the National Centre for Social Research

Investigating the characteristics of neighbourhood social environment that affect health over and above the characteristics of individuals with Dr Mai Stafford (UCL).

Japanese and Finnish collaborative work on the socio-economic differences in health and disease with Dr Tarani Chandola (UCL) , Dr Pekka Martikainen (University of Helsinki), and Professor Sada Kagamimori and Dr Michikazu Sekine (University of Toyama).