Addressing the Health Impacts of the Cost-of-Living Crisis with Sir Michael Marmot, Professor of Epidemiology, University College London

Professor Sir Michael Marmot is Professor of Epidemiology at University College London, Director of the UCL Institute of Health Equity, and Past President of the World Medical Association.
He is the author of The Health Gap: the challenge of an unequal world (Bloomsbury: 2015) and Status Syndrome: how your place on the social gradient directly affects your health (Bloomsbury: 2004). Professor Marmot holds the Harvard Lown Professorship for 2014-2017 and is the recipient of the Prince Mahidol Award for Public Health 2015. He has been awarded honorary doctorates from 20 universities. In 2021 Professor Marmot received BMJ's Outstanding Contribution to Health award.

Professor Marmot has led research groups on health inequalities for over 40 years. He chaired:

• the Regional Commission on the Social Determinants of Health, established in November 2019 to review health inequities in WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean Region and issue recommendations to address these inequities. In March 2021 the commission published both an Executive Summary and Executive Brief under the title: Build Back Fairer: Achieving Health Equity in the Eastern Mediterranean Region
• the 'Commission on Equity and Health Inequalities in the Americas', set up in 2015 by the World Health Organizations’ Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO/ WHO)
• And the Commission on Social Determinants of Health (CSDH), which was set up by the World Health Organization in 2005, and produced the report entitled: ‘Closing the Gap in a Generation’ in August 2008.

At the request of the British Government, he conducted the Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England, which published its report 'Fair Society, Healthy Lives' in February 2010. This was followed by the 'European Review of Social Determinants of Health and the Health Divide', for WHO Euro in 2014.

In February 2020, Professor Marmot launched the ‘Marmot Review 10 Years On’, which serves as an update to the ‘Fair Society, Healthy Lives’ review. In December 2020 he published 'Build Back Fairer: The COVID 19 Marmot Review', a three fold report that aimed to:

• Examine inequalities in COVID-19 mortality
• Show the effects that the pandemic, and the societal response to contain the pandemic, have had on social and economic inequalities, their effects on mental and physical health, and their likely effects on health inequalities in the future
• Make recommendations on what needs to be done

Professor Marmot also chaired the Breast Screening Review for the NHS National Cancer Action Team and was a member of The Lancet-University of Oslo Commission on Global Governance for Health. He set up and led a number of longitudinal cohort studies on the social gradient in health in the UCL Department of Epidemiology & Public Health (where he was head of department for 25 years): the Whitehall II Studies of British Civil Servants, investigating explanations for the striking inverse social gradient in morbidity and mortality; the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), and several international research efforts on the social determinants of health.

Professor Marmot served as President of the British Medical Association (BMA) in 2010-2011, and is President of the British Lung Foundation. He is an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology; a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences; an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy, and an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health of the Royal College of Physicians. He is also a trustee of the Food Foundation, was a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution for six years, and in 2000 was knighted by Her Majesty The Queen, for services to epidemiology and the understanding of health inequalities. He was appointed a Companion of Honour for services to public health in the 2023 New Year Honours. Professor Marmot is a Member of the National Academy of Medicine.