Fig. 6

Sir Muir Gray is Consultant in Public Health at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust, and a Visiting Professor in Knowledge Management in the Nuffield Department of Surgery. He has been awarded both a CBE and a Knighthood for services to the NHS. Sir Gray entered the Public Health Service by joining the City of Oxford Health Department in 1972. The first phase of his professional career focused on disease prevention, and he also developed a local, then national programme of work to promote health in old age, at a time before the implications of population ageing had been recognised. Based on work in Oxford he developed a number of national initiatives, particularly designed to prevent hypothermia, publishing a Fabian Society report on the relationship between housing and poverty and the excess winter deaths, many from hypothermia, that took place in the UK. He was appointed to the board of the Anchor Housing Association and helped develop their Staying Put campaign. He has alsodeveloped all the screening programmes in the NHS, for pregnant women, children, adults and older people for example offering men aged 65 screening for abdominal aortic aneurysm and, for both men and women, screening for colorectal cancer. Working on the principle that the delivery of clean clear knowledge was analogous to the provision of clean clear water he saw the organisation and delivery of knowledge as a public health service, for example developing NHS Choices (www.nhs.uk), and setting up the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine in Oxford. During this period he was appointed as the Chief Knowledge Officer of the NHS. Sir Gray is now working with both NHS England and Public Health England to bring about a transformation of care with the aim of increasing value for both populations and individuals