Mitch Blair

Mitch Blair is Professor of Paediatrics and Child Public Health and joined the Division of Paediatrics in 1998 and is currently based at Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow.

He joined the School of Public Health in 2019 collaborating closely with the Child Health Unit. He has a background in medical education, epidemiology and health services research. His primary research interests are in preventive child health programmes, international child health indicators and child health services research.

He recently led the €7 million EU Horizon 2020 project MOCHA (Models of Child Health Appraised), analysing Primary Child Health care across 30 countries in Europe which was completed in 2019 and has been published as an Open Access book.

He also runs an MSc Module on Child Public Health in the Paediatrics MSc and an Early Years module for the Lifecourse course of the Global Master of Public Health (GMPH) for the School of Public Health together with Professor Sonia Saxena and Dr Dougal Hargreaves.

He was lead for undergraduate paediatric medicine from 2005-2018 and pioneered the “Follow My Footsteps” scheme with Dr Bob Boyle attaching students to a pregnant woman and her family to be prospectively followed up during the first two years.

His most recent research is in developing a better understanding of unscheduled acute care in young children and exploring interventions which may reduce this. (BLUEPRINTS trial)

Publications

Journals

• Woodcock T, Novov V, Skirrow H, et al., 2023, Health and socio-demographic characteristics associated with uptake of seasonal influenza vaccination amongst pregnant women: retrospective cohort study, British Journal of General Practice, Vol:73, ISSN:0960-1643, Pages:e148-e155
• Nakubulwa MA, Greenfield G, Pizzo E, et al., 2022, To what extent do callers follow the advice given by a non-emergency medical helpline (NHS 111): A retrospective cohort study, Plos One, Vol:17, ISSN:1932-6203
• Beaney T, Clarke J, Woodcock T, et al., 2021, Patterns of healthcare utilisation in children and young people: a retrospective cohort study using routinely collected healthcare data in Northwest London, Bmj Open, Vol:11, ISSN:2044-6055, Pages:1-14
• Zdunek K, Alexander D, Schroder-Back P, et al., 2021, Factors influencing the uptake of evidence in child health policy-making: results of a survey among 23 European countries, Health Research Policy and Systems, Vol:19, ISSN:1478-4505, Pages:1-16