David is senior fellow in public health and health inequalities at The King’s Fund. His work focusses on supporting local health and care systems and partners to develop their approaches to public health, population health and health inequalities; and on influencing wider policy in these areas. He is currently expert adviser to the Health and Social Care Committee’s inquiry on prevention. Whilst at the Fund he has published widely in areas such as: housing and health, the role of the voluntary sector in health, assessing public health policy, and what we can learn from international experience on population health. He is a contributing author to the recent independent Covenant for Health report and is currently undertaking projects on devolution and health, and the role of population health and public health leadership amongst other areas.
Before joining the Fund, David worked at the Department of Health as deputy director for health inequalities. He managed the Labour government's targets on health inequalities and the independent Marmot Review of inequalities in health. While in the Department he worked on many policy areas – including on diabetes, long-term conditions, dental health, waiting times, the pharmaceutical industry, childhood obesity and choice and competition – as an economic and strategy adviser. He has also worked at Guy's Hospital, King’s College London and the Centre for Health Economics in York where his focus was on the economics of public health and behaviours and incentives. He trained as an economist.