Peter Littlejohns, Clinical and Public Health Director

Peter is the Clinical and Public Health Director of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence which is the single independent organisation responsible for providing national guidance on the promotion of good health and the prevention and treatment of ill health in the UK. He is one of 4 Executive Directors and has been in post since the Institute was created in 1999. He has contributed to the establishment of all the guidance development programmes and currently has lead responsibility for Research and Development.

Peter qualified MBBS from St. Georges Hospital Medical School in 1979. Following general medical training he entered the specialty of Public Health Medicine and held a range of academic and service posts prior to establishing and directing the NHS R&D funded Health Care Evaluation Unit. During this period he was awarded an MD for research into the diagnosis and management of Asthma. In 1995 Peter was awarded a professorial chair in Public Health by the University of London and continues to have academic links with St. Georges.

He is a Member of the Royal College of General Practitioners, Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health and Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.

His research interests include most aspects of improving the cost-effectiveness of health care and he was the instigating chief scientist on a European Union BIOMED II funded project to create a critical appraisal instrument for clinical guidelines. His unit was the coordinating centre of a 12 country collaboration which developed the AGREE instrument (Appraising Guidelines, REsearch & Evaluation). He was a founding member and trustee of the AGREE Research Trust. In 1998 he spent a year in South Africa undertaking research into Health Policy funded by the Health Systems Research Trust

Peter has published nearly 200 articles, chapters and books on a range of subjects related to health care evaluation.