John Powles

1. Global burden of disease attributable to excess salt/sodium intake. I lead on this within the Global Burden of Diseases Nutrition and Chronic Diseases Expert Group.
2. Public health policy in developed countries. I have reviewed adult and child mortality trends in 37 developed countries between 1970 and 2010 and related them (tentatively) to the evolution of political economies. European communism failed disastrously (but quite specifically) to control non-communicable disease in adults. The USA has also been falling behind and now lags 20 plus years behind the leaders. Political homogeneity appears to have been associated with less favorable survival trends.
3. Institutional / evolutionary economics and noncommunicable disease control. These developing approaches may help in understanding the critical early institutional responses to non-communicable disease. They also offer more temporal depth than discourse on ‘evidence based medicine’ – which tends to assume (rather than account for) the existence of relevant mature science.