MUIR GRAY

​Muir Gray entered the Public Health Service by joining the City of Oxford Health Department in 1972 after qualifying in medicine in Glasgow, the city of his birth

The first phase of his professional career in 1971 focused on disease prevention, for example on helping people stop smoking. 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 hospital admission and facilitate hospital discharge, including preventing hypothermia, publishing a Fabian Society  report on the relationship between housing and poverty and the excess winter death, that took place in the United Kingdom. He was the Secretary of ASH Action on Smoking and Health

Then he developed all the screening programmes in the NHS, for pregnant women, children, adults and older people for example offering man aged sixty five screening for abdominal aortic aneurysm and , for both men and women, screening for colorectal cancer. He also developed services to bring knowledge to patients and professionals.  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, which now has over 40 million visits a month, 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 and was awarded both a CBE and later a Knighthood for services for the NHS.

He is a Visiting Professor in Knowledge Management in the Nuffield Department of Surgery, and a Professor in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences where he leads work on Evidence Based Medicine and Value He set up charities to promote urban walking and an Oxford based Centre for Sustainable Healthcare. He set up the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare and Better Value Healthcare  and has published a series of  How To Handbooks for example, How `to Get Better Value Healthcare, How To Build Healthcare Systems andHow To Create the Right Healthcare Culture.His hobby is ageing and how to cope with it 

Here is what he says about his health "I am a fairly typical healthy 76 year old, I had an attack of polio when i was seven which left my right leg a little thinner than my left, but I could still play sport, then at 12 I developed acute kidney failure but in the days before dialysis was lucky enough to recover. also i grew up in a filthy city, Glasgow before the Clean Air Act, and my parents smoked. This will be typical of many people who are 70 plus today.  Then about seven years ago I had heart attack, although at 'low risk' but made a very good recovery, thanks to a stent in one of my arteries. To stay healthy i try to walk briskly using the www.nhs.uk/oneyou app, eat a mediterranean diet, minimise stress and sleep eight hours a night, and every year i try to take more action against ageing for example by increasing the time spent stretching. since then i have had two adventures. i tripped running for a train , which was late and broke 7 ribs, 5 of them in two places, then a year later i developed severe sciatica and am still a little weak in my left leg."

KEY PUBLICATIONS 

​The Antidote to Ageing 

Sod60!
Sod70!
SodSitting! get Moving!
Sod It ,Eat Well!

Midlife Look Younger, Live Longer, Feel Better