John Wright is a doctor and epidemiologist with a background in hospital medicine and public health in the UK and in Africa. He established and leads the Bradford Institute for Health Research and Wolfson Centre for Applied Health Research, working to speed up translation of medical research into practice and policy. He is the Director of Research for the City of Bradford and Director of the NIHR Yorkshire and Humber Applied Research Collaboration. He is Visiting Professor in Clinical Epidemiology at the Universities of York, Leeds and Bradford and has authored over 500 papers and three textbooks and been awarded over £150 million in research award funding, £50 million as chief investigator
In 2007 he set up the Born in Bradford (BiB) cohort study which is following the lives of over 13,000 families as their children grow up. Evidence from BiB studies has informed local, national international policies and led to improvements in clinical practice and public health as well as a successful City of Culture award. In 2016 he set up Born in Bradford’s Better Start – the world’s first experimental birth cohort – to test new approaches to providing the best support in the crucial period of early life. In 2019 he established ActEarly to develop a whole systems City Collaboratory approach to improving the health and life chances of children from deprived communities in London and Yorkshire.
He has worked to develop sustainable public health programmes in Africa for 30 years including setting up and running an Ebola Treatment Centre for Doctors of the World in Sierra Leone during the Ebola epidemic. He was the research and scientific lead for Clinical and District Gold command during the COVID19 pandemic and set up the COVID19 Scientific Advisory group (CSAG). He has reported for the BBC on programmes covering Born in Bradford, Ebola and most recently The NHS Frontline podcast.