Prof Linda Bauld
University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Presentation title: “Aligning communicable and non-communicable disease prevention: how the Covid-19 crisis in the UK might progress a healthy weight strategy”
Linda Bauld holds the Bruce and John Usher Chair in Public Health in the Usher Institute, College of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Linda is a behavioural scientist with a PhD in social policy whose research focuses on two main areas: the evaluation of complex interventions to improve health, and how research can inform public health policy. Since 2014, she has combined her academic role with a secondment to Cancer Research UK where she holds the CRUK/BUPA Chair in Behavioural Research for Cancer Prevention. Linda is a former scientific adviser to the UK government on tobacco control and a current adviser to Health Canada and the World Health Organisation’s FCTC Secretariat. She leads two research Consoria - the Tobacco Control Capacity Programme, involving research teams in five countries in Africa and three in South Asia - and SPECTRUM, involving 10 UK Universities and partner organisations conducting research on the commercial determinants of health. During the Covid-19 crisis she has been a regular contributor to print and broadcast media on approaches to addressing the pandemic. She also serves as a member of the Covid-19 research funding panel for the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council and the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Post-Covid Futures Commission.