CLRN Leadership

Clinical Director

The Clinical Director for the Thames Valley CLRN is Profesor Jeremy Fairbank.

Professor Jeremy Fairbank’s medical education was at Cambridge and St Thomas’s. He became interested in the spine during his first house job, then spent two years at the Orthopaedic Hospital in Oswestry learning more about this most central but poorly understood structure that led to his MD thesis. His training in orthopaedic surgery was through a rotation based in St Bartholomew’s Hospital and Great Ormond Street Hospital, which, along with a year of Paediatric surgery in Nottingham, extended his interest and expertise into children’s spines and scoliosis. He was a consultant in Birmingham for 5 years before moving to Oxford in 1989.

He has been a member of the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre R & D Committee since 1995 and Chair since 1999. He has also been was also member of the Oxford R&D Consortium since 1999. He has experience of obtaining funding for and organising and implementing a large, complex and very challenging Randomised Controlled Trial (MRC Spine Stabilisation Trial). This involved orthopaedic surgeons and physiotherapists, many of whom had not been previously involved in clinical research. This gave him first-hand experience of the “reality gap” between policy supporting research and the actuality of implementing it on the “shop floor”.

He feels that we live in exciting times for clinical and health service research and expects the Thames Valley CLRN to be in the vanguard in this initiative.

Jeremy is supported by Co-Director Professor David Mant.

Professor David Mant was an undergraduate student at Churchill College Cambridge (1969-72) and Birmingham Medical School (1972-77). He began his clinical academic career in 1983 as a clinical lecturer in general practice at Oxford University and part-time general practitioner at South Oxford Health Centre. In 1993 he accepted a full time academic appointment at the University of Southampton. During his time in Southampton he was seconded for 2 years to the post of regional director of NHS R&D and he chaired the national working party on R&D in Primary Care. He returned to Oxford as Professor of General Practice in October 1998 to lead the newly established Department of Primary Health Care. He still works as a service general practitioner in Oxford and believes that general practice is an ideal setting in which to teach clinical medicine. He also believes that the main purpose of research in general practice should be to inform clinical care and has led a number of large-scale clinical trials and cohort studies in UK general practice. His personal research interests focus on the prevention and clinical management of common diseases in general practice, particularly cardiovascular disease, cancer and childhood infection.

Core Team

The core team is led by Catherine Montgomery, Senior Manager. The Lead RM&G Manager is Mark Dolman. The Information Manager is Leona Payne and the Administrator is Barbara Tilbury.

Executive Group

The day to day operation of the CLRN is supported by an Executive Group, led by the CLRN Clinical Director, which has representation from primary, secondary and tertiary care and mental health.

Last updated: 28 August 2008