John Newton (epidemiologist)


Professor John Norman Newton FRCP FFPH FRSPH is a British epidemiologist and public health expert. He is the leader of the UK Government's COVID-19 testing programme.

Education

He was educated at Shrewsbury School, Trinity College, Oxford, King's College London and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

Career

Newton was an academic epidemiologist at the University of Oxford, and the founding Chief Executive of the charity UK Biobank. He also served as Director of Research at Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital and at University Hospital Southampton. He was appointed Honorary Professor of Public Health and Epidemiology in the Centre for Epidemiology at the University of Manchester in 2004.
In 2005 he led work for the UK Department of Health on a national public health information and intelligence strategy. He was appointed as Regional Director of Public Health for NHS South Central in 2007.
Newton was appointed as Director of Health Improvement for Public Health England on 12 October 2012.
In May 2020, he was announced as national coordinator of the UK Government's coronavirus testing programme.

Other roles

Professor Newton chairs the World Health Organisation’s European Burden of Disease Network and led England's contribution to the Global Burden of Disease project, a study into the impacts of diseases on the world.
He is Vice President of the Faculty of Public Health and a director of Health Data Insight CIC. He is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London and a fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health.