Our Ambassadors

Justine Menzies

Principal Research Officer, Scottish Government

Justine is a Scottish Government Principal Research Officer who specialises in Children & Family analysis within the Educational Analytical Services division, based in the Directorate for Learning. 

Her research interests include: Academic engagement and liaison, Children in vulnerable situations, Economic analysis, Children in vulnerable situations research, Children in vulnerable situations Statistics, Early learning and childcare and school-aged childcare research, Early learning and childcare and school-aged childcare economic analysis, Early learning and childcare and school-aged childcare Statistics, Growing up in Scotland Survey (GUS), Maternal and child health Research, and Wellbeing of Children, Young People and Families Research. 

Justine has engaged extensively with the ADR Scotland team, and looks forward to developing her engagement and involvement with linked data.

“I am delighted to be an ADR Ambassador. Administrative data offers the opportunity to generate unique insights across a wide range of services many of which we all interact with. By applying a life-course, prevention-focused approach to the use of administrative data, we can better understand opportunities for primary prevention and early intervention. This enables us to generate valuable insights that support more informed policymaking, improve services, and ultimately enhance the lives of people across Scotland and the UK. There is immense potential within the datasets collected by different administrations to deepen our knowledge, foster greater collaboration across sectors, and enable more person- and family-centred approaches.”

David Jack

Senior Knowledge Exchange Fellow

David Jack is an experienced quantitative analyst and researcher whose work focuses on improving the quality and accessibility of data relating to socio-economic and health inequalities in Scotland. He is currently a Senior Knowledge Exchange Fellow within the Fraser of Allander Institute, situated at the University of Strathclyde, where he leads a research programme examining the lives of people with learning disabilities in Scotland. David is also part of the Scottish Health Equity Research Unit (SHERU), an independent research unit, funded by the Health Foundation to provide insight, analysis, and scrutiny on the socio-economic factors driving health inequalities in Scotland. He is a professional member of the Crohn’s & Colitis UK, Evidence and Insight Advisory Board.

David has previously held a range of senior analytical roles across the public sector, including within the Scottish Government, the Scottish Fiscal Commission, and Skills Development Scotland. He also spent two and a half years at Research Data Scotland, joining at its inception and helping to establish the organisation’s work to connect accredited researchers to Scotland’s public sector data and strengthen the conditions for data-driven research in the public good.

“I believe that administrative data is one of the most powerful resources we have for strengthening public policy. When effectively linked and used for public good research, it enables new insights that can inform better decision making, improve outcomes for people and communities, and support efforts to reduce inequalities.”

Linda Bauld

Chief Social Policy Adviser, Scottish Government

Professor Linda Bauld OBE FMedSci FRSE FRCPE FAcSS FFPH is the Bruce and John Usher Chair in Public Health in the Usher Institute, College of Medicine, University of Edinburgh and Chief Social Policy Adviser to the Scottish Government. For the past 25 years she has led studies to prevent or treat the main modifiable risk factors for non-communicable Diseases including cancer, diabetes and respiratory and cardiovascular diseases with a particular focus on tobacco, alcohol, diet and inequalities in health. She leads two research consortia: SPECTRUM - funded by the UK Prevention Research Partnership that focuses on the commercial determinants of health; and Behavioural Research UK (BR-UK) - funded by the ESRC as a leadership hub for behavioural research across topics and disciplines. She is a former Scientific Adviser to the UK Department of Health, the World Health Organisation and Cancer Research UK on prevention and public health.

"I’m delighted to join the ADR UK Ambassador Programme. I’ve seen the value of administrative data and data linkage, in both my academic and government roles. In my own research on non-communicable disease prevention, administrative data collected by the NHS and other public services allows us to understand the prevalence of risk factors across entire populations and then linking that to service use helps us better understand outcomes and how to improve them. In my government role, we rely on Scotland and the UK’s trustworthy data system to identify needs in our population, which is essential for planning evidence-based policy responses to address them. ADR UK’s work across all four nations is transforming how researchers within government and in academia and other sectors access and use data to address societal and economic challenges. I look forward to working even more closely with the ADR UK team in the future."

Michael Fleming

Senior Lecturer in Public Health and Chartered Statistician

Michael is a senior lecturer in Public Health and a chartered statistician within the School of Health and Wellbeing. He has a BSc (honours) in Applied Mathematics and Astronomy, an MSc in Applied Statistics, and a PhD in Public Health.

Long standing research interests include using novel record linkage techniques and statistical methods to analyse complex linked data for research purposes across the spectrum of public health. Michael is particularly interested in maternal and child health and his current research focuses on child and adolescent health, neurodevelopmental, and educational outcomes related to childhood chronic conditions, early life factors, neonatal and childhood morbidity and maternal/obstetric factors including exposures in-utero.

“The ability to access and (crucially) link together high quality, centrally held, population-wide, patient-level, administrative data across generations (mother and child), across sectors (health and non-health), and over time is vitally important to health research enabling novel life-course analyses and insight into wider determinants (and outcomes) of health. Data linkage pulls together key real-world information from different sources to build even richer, large-scale,  powerful linked datasets capable of answering complex research questions.”

Neil White

Senior Statistician, Scottish Government

Neil White is a Senior Statistician in the Scottish Government’s Health and Social Care Analytical Services Division, jointly heading up the Population Health Unit.

He has worked in Scottish Government analytical services for over 20 years, covering areas such as justice, education, finance, economy, agriculture & environment and health & social care.

"Data linkage is important to me because it can be used to improve processes and procedures and can enhance our ability to report and respond to situations. Data linkage can also allow new insights by bringing together data sources to reveal different perspectives that we may not have otherwise seen whilst looking at the data in isolation. This increases our understanding of particular situations or topics and helps us drive decisions to improve people’s lives. One example of how data linkage has made a real difference to people’s lives is the Scottish Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest project.

The ADR Scotland partnership has a key role in bringing together data linkage specialists from the Scottish Government and academic researchers to help maximise the use and utility of linked data."

Mark McAteer

Director of Strategic Planning, Performance and Comms, Scottish Fire and Rescue

Director of Strategic Planning, Performance an d Communications, Scottish Fire and Rescue Service

Mark gained his doctorate from the University of Strathclyde in 1993, and has held a series of research posts including Lecturer in Public Service Management within the Strathclyde Business School.    

In 2005, Mark took up a post to help establish the Improvement Service, a public service improvement body dedicated to supporting organisational development, change and reform in Scottish Local Government and Community Planning Partnerships. In 2015 he was seconded to the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) to act as Strategic Adviser to the Board and the Chief Fire Officer, and in 2016 was appointed to his current role and became a member of the Strategic Leadership Team.

“Making ever greater use of the administrative data the SFRS holds and can access via its partners is a key priority for SFRS. Using that data and the research it can support to gain further insight into the effective operation of the Service and into the needs of our communities is key to improving the policies and practices of the SFRS and in driving forward innovation. Therefore, to be able to work with ADR UK is not only a personal privilege, but will also help support the SFRS in our endeavours. I also hope by actively supporting collaboration in this field across the public sector we can all make more effective and appropriate use of the wide array of data all public services hold.”