Professor in Adolescent Health, Institute of Child Health, University College London and President, Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.
Russell Viner holds a personal chair in adolescent health at University College London (UCL), the first professor of adolescent health appointed in the UK. His research focuses on the health of adolescents, from global analyses of social determinants of health and education to conducting intervention studies both at the school level and clinical interventions in obesity and diabetes. He established the first adolescent medicine clinical program in the UK (University College Hospital, 1998) and has led the development of adolescent health clinical approaches in the UK.
He is an NIHR senior investigator and currently named on over £20 million in current research grants, being chief investigator on approximately £7 million, with funding obtained from the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR); the Medical Research Council (MRC); the Department of Health, England; the Wellcome Trust; and from various charities.
Professor Viner was one of the founders of the Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health (thelancetyouth.com) and led the work of the commission on the links between education and health. His work through the commission identified expansion of secondary education as the key global lever to improve young people’s health. In other work, he is the director of the NIHR Obesity Policy Research Unit; an investigator in the Dept. of Health Policy Research Unit in Children, Young People and Families and UCL Executive member for the NIHR School for Public Health; contributed to the US Institute of Medicine report Shorter Lives, Poorer Health: US Health in international perspective (2012); works as a consultant for the Departments of Health and Education in England; and consults for the World Health Organization (WHO).
