John Beard (Health Expert)

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Dr John Roland Beard (born in Adelaide, Australia in 1955) is a global health expert. He is currently Director of Ageing and Life Course with the World Health Organization in Geneva.

Dr John Beard, Global Health Expert

Early Life and Childhood

Beard was born in Adelaide, South Australia in 1955 to father Roland Beard, an obstetrician, and mother, Christine. Beard attended St Peters College for his entire schooling years, moving on to study Medicine at the University of Adelaide in 1972.

Early Career

Beard graduated in Medicine and Surgery from the University of Adelaide in 1979. He undertook postgraduate training in South Africa and the United Kingdom, before working as Medical Officer for an Aboriginal community-controlled medical service in Kempsey, NSW, Australia. He subsequently established a private practice with his then wife. In 1990 he returned to Adelaide to undertake training in the Master of Public Health, but transferred to the University of Sydney where he completed a PhD on the health impact of pesticide exposure. His thesis suggested a possible link between exposure to DDT and subsequent development of pancreatic cancer. He worked for 15 years in rural Australia, initially as Regional Director of Public Health in Lismore, New South Wales, and subsequently as the inaugural Head of the Northern Rivers University Department of Rural Health, a joint initiative of the University of Sydney and Southern Cross University. In 2000, he was Manager of Public Health for the Sydney Olympic Games. He later moved to the United States where he was Senior Advisor on Academic Affairs and Senior Epidemiologist with the New York Academy of Medicine.

His main research focus is the impact of the physical and social environments on a wide range of outcomes including bloodborne infections, cancer, ischaemic heart disease, depression, adverse birth outcomes and, increasingly, trajectories of healthy ageing.

International Career

Beard joined WHO as Director of Ageing and Life Course in 2009. From October 2010 to April 2012 he held the additional responsibility of Director (a.i.) of the Department of Gender, Women and Health. In 2012, he launched the Global Network for Age-friendly Cities and Communities. with Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York City. The Network has since grown to include over 550 municipalities responsible for well over 170 million people globally, including Washington, Paris, Chicago, Manchester, Brussels, Oslo, Tehran, Seoul, as well as parts of New Delhi and Kolkata. According to Sir Michael Marmot in the Guardian the Network enables practical recommendations to be developed “by listening to the voices of older people around the world who said what they needed, and to service-providers who have experience from the coalface.”

Beard has worked closely with other international organizations, particularly the World Economic Forum, and from 2012 to 2016 was chair or vice chair of the Forum’s Global Agenda Council on an Ageing Society and is a current member of their Global Future Council on Human Enhancement. He has moderated several sessions at the Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, and was an editor of the Forum’s influential monograph Population Ageing: Peril or Promise. He is a prominent keynote speaker at major international conferences, acted as Master of Ceremonies for high level events for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in St Petersburg and San Francisco, and contributed to the 2017 G7 leaders meeting and the associated G7 Health Ministers meeting. His work is frequently discussed in media outlets around the world, and he was recently recognised as a distinguished alumni of the University of Adelaide.

Healthy Ageing

Beard was lead editor for the World report on ageing and health that was released in late 2015. He led the team that developed the Global Strategy and Action Plan on Ageing and Health, and helped negotiate its unanimous adoption by the 194 governments of the World Health Assembly in 2016. The Strategy has been used by many countries as the basis for their policy response to population ageing. These documents reframe the concept of Healthy Ageing around the ability of an older person to do the things that are important to them, rather than simply the absence of disease.

During Beard’s tenure, WHO has also emphasized that the diversity observed in older age is not random, but reflects the cumulative impact of advantage and disadvantage across people’s lives. The Organization has called in many forums for policy that will address, rather than reinforce, these inequities. Drawing on the capabilities approach of Amartya Sen, the World report frames the expenditure required to achieve this as investments that give older people the freedom “ to live lives that previous generations might never have imagined”.

Key Recent Publications

• WHO. World report on ageing and health. World Health Organization, Geneva 2015.
• JR Beard, A Officer, I Araujo de Carvalho, R Sadana, AM Pot, JP Michel, P Lloyd Sherlock, J Epping-Jordan, G Peters, WR Mahanani, J Amuthavalli Thiyagarajan, S Chatterji. The World Report on Ageing and Health: a policy framework for healthy ageing. The Lancet 2016; 387 (10033): 2145-2154.
• Hanson MA, Cooper C, Sayer AA, Eendebak R, Clough GF, Beard JR. Developmental Aspects of a Life Course Approach to Healthy Ageing. Journal of Physiology. 2016; 594(8): 2147-2160.
• John R. Beard, David E. Bloom. Towards a Comprehensive Public Health Response to Population Ageing. Lancet. 2015 February 14; 385(9968): 658–661
• Aboderin I, Beard J. Older People's Health and Socioeconomic Development in sub-Saharan Africa. Lancet. 2015; 385 (9968) e9-e11
• Peter Lloyd-Sherlock, John Beard, Nadia Minicuci, Shah Ebrahim and Somnath Chatterji. Hypertension among older adults in low and middle income countries: prevalence, awareness and control. International Journal of Epidemiology 2014;1–13 doi:10.1093/ije/dyt215 (see also High Hypertension Rates in Low- and Middle-Income Countries – News and Analysis, JAMA, 2014 March; 311(11): 1101) PMC 3937973
• Lusti-Narasimhan M, Beard JR. Sexual Health in Older Women. Bulletin of the World Health Organization. 2013; 91:707–709 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.2471/BLT.13.119230
• [null Beard JR, Cerdá M, Blaney S, Ahern J, Vlahov D, Galea S. Neighborhood characteristics and change in symptoms of depression in older residents of New York City. American Journal of Public Health.] 2009;99(7):1308-1314. PMID 19008519.
• Beard JR, Blaney S, Cerda M, Frye V, Lovasi G, Ompad D, Rundle A, Vlahov D. Environmental characteristics and disability in older adults. Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences. 2009 64B(2):252-257 PMID 19181694
• Beard JR, Lincoln D, Donoghue D, Taylor D, Summerhayes R, Dunn TM, Earnest A, Morgan G. Socioeconomic and maternal determinants of small for gestational age births: patterns of increasing disparity. Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica 2009; 88 (5):575 – 583. PMID 19330564
• Barnett L, van Beurden E, Morgan P, Brooks L, Beard JR Childhood Motor Skill Proficiency as a Predictor of Adolescent Physical Activity. Journal of Adolescent Health. 2009 Mar;44(3):252-9.
• Beard JR, Tracy M, Vlahov D, Galea S. Trajectory and socioeconomic predictors of depression in a prospective study of residents of New York City Annals of Epidemiology. 2008;18 (3):235-43. PMID 18083544
• Beard J. DDT and Human Health. Science of the Total Environment 2006; 355 (1-3): 78-89. PMID 15894351 John Beard, Tim Sladden, Geoffrey Morgan, Geoffrey Berry, Lyndon Brooks, and Anthony McMichael. Health Impacts of Pesticide Exposure in a Cohort of Outdoor Workers. Environmental Health Perspectives May 2003; 111 (5) : 724-730 PMID 12727601

Biographies

"Global ageing guru | Medical Journal of Australia"

"WHO | "We were older then, we are younger now""

Videos of John Beard

Uppsala Health Summit (2014-06-16), John Beard, WHO, speaks at Uppsala Health Summit

World Economic Forum (2015-10-26), Abu Dhabi 2015 - Issue Briefing: Sustainable Development Goals

Oxford Ageing (2013-11-20), John Beard - Keynote speech: 'From Talk to Action'

Leuphana Digital School (2013-01-23), John Beard 1/5 - Life Expectancy & Social Change - Leuphana Digital School

References

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