Department of Public Health and Primary Care

The Department of Public Health and Primary Care (PHPC) is one of Europe’s leading academic departments of population health sciences. It comprises over 400 staff and graduate students, including more than 25 professors, readers, university lecturers, and other senior academic staff.  

Groups in the Department are underpinned by major programme grants, such as those from the UK Medical Research Council (MRC), the Wellcome Trust, the British Heart Foundation (BHF), Cancer Research UK, the UK National Institute of Health Research (NIHR), the European Union, the US National Institutes of Health, industry, and other sources.   

The Department holds silver Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF) accreditation for the Strangeways Research Laboratory. Contributors toward this accreditation include The Centre for Cancer Genetic Epidemiology (CCGE) led by Professor Antonis Antoniou and Professor Nora Pashayan; the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Unit (CEU) led by Professor John Danesh; The Primary Care Unit (PCU) led by Dr Juliet Usher-Smith; The Healthcare Improvement Studies (THIS) Institute led by Professor Mary Dixon-Woods; and the Department of Oncology SRL Lab Team, led by Professor Alison Dunning.

The Department provides internationally-recognised expertise in: genetic epidemiology, biomarkers, cohort studies, quantitative methods, public health, primary care, and behavioural sciences.  

Major areas of application include common chronic diseases (eg, cardiometabolic diseases, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases), and major behavioural risk factors driving these conditions (e.g., consumption of tobacco, alcohol, and adverse diets).   

The Department benefits greatly from the expertise arising from its strategic collaborations with the Genome Campus, Quantitative MRC Units and genomic medicine. 

It provides excellent training and educational programmes in biostatistics, epidemiology, public health, and primary care, at both undergraduate and graduate levels, including training of Academic Clinical Fellows. 

Our Research Themes

• Biological Basis of Disease
• Early Detection of Disease, Risk Prediction and Screening
• Behaviour and Health
• Health Services Research
• Global Health

Our Research Units

Find out about our research units and how they're funded:

• Cardiovascular Epidemiology Unit (CEU)
• The Primary Care Unit (PCU)
• Centre for Cancer Genetic Epidemiology (CCGE)
• The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute (THIS)