Michael Donmall

Overview

Professor of Health & Society in the Division of Population Health, Health Services Research and Primary Care, and Director of the National Drug Evidence Centre (NDEC). Member of the University Ethics Committee (UREC2) with an honorary contract as Public Health Academic (Health Sciences) with Public Health England.

Biography

Professor of Health & Society at the University of Manchester and Director of the National Drug Evidence Centre, Division of Population Health, Health Services Research and Primary Care. He also currently holds the position of UK Expert at the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction, Lisbon and has been an advisor at the United Nations.

From a background as Anthropologist at University College London (1975-84), Mike has a teaching qualification from King's and a PhD from the University of London’s Institute of Child Health, awarded in 1984 for research into cardiovascular precursors in children. He has published in anthropology, child health and drug addiction research. He was appointed to the Government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs in 1992 and made a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health, Royal College of Physicians in 2006.

He moved to The University of Manchester in 1984 to set up an epidemiological research resource in the area of drug misuse. In 2003 he was appointed as the first Director of the National Drug Evidence Centre which is responsible to government departments for surveillance, research and national statistics on substance misuse treatment. Mike’s research has spanned over 30 years and he has published widely. He is well known for his innovative work in developing treatment information systems across the UK and Europe, and for utilising these data in treatment and policy related research. Since 1989 he has been immersed in development of the Treatment Demand Indicator, now used across Europe, and for much of that time was UK Expert at the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction, Lisbon. In 2006, he edited the Global Toolkit on the measurement of drug treatment demand for the United Nations.

Over the last 10 years Mike’s research interests have focussed largely on investigating the epidemiology of drug misuse, evaluation of treatment interventions and the measurement of outcomes and effectiveness. High profile national research studies have included: the Epidemiological Surveillance of Drug Misuse, National Cocaine Treatment Study, Outcome of Waiting Lists Study, the Drug Treatment Outcomes Research Study and Evaluation of Payment by Results.

Most recently he has developed an interest in visualisation techniques and leads a Visualisation Group (University Company ViewItUk Ltd) developing graphical and interactive mapping resources in analysing complex health datasets.