Alistair Carr

Alistair is a Public Health Registrar. His project aims to increase understanding of how the environment that we live in impacts multimorbidity development. His specific focus is on features of the built environment at the neighourhood level. This describes human-made buildings and infrastructure such as green spaces, amenities, and road networks. These are upstream determinants of health that are potentially modifiable. If linked to multimorbidity, changing the built environment could be used as a strategy to reduce multimorbidity development and progression. This project has three workstreams that will answer the following questions:

  • What is currently known about the association of the neighbourhood built environment with multimorbidity?
  • What is the association of the neighbourhood built environment features in Biobank and SAIL with multimorbidity development?
  • What is the association of the neighbourhood built environment features in Biobank and SAIL with multimorbidity prevalence and progression?

Before joining the Multimorbidity Programme, Alistair was a NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow training in the East of England deanery. During this he completed a MPhil in Population Health Sciences (University of Cambridge) and an academic placement at the MRC Epidemiology Unit. These experiences gave Alistair an interest in interventions that could improve the health of whole populations, regardless of individual disease risk, by changing the physical and social environment.

Prior to public health training, Alistair worked as an Academic Foundation Programme doctor in the South-East Scotland deanery, during which he completed an academic placement with the University of Edinburgh Usher Institute. He also worked as a Population Health Fellow at Kingston Hospital. Alistair graduated from medicine (University of Glasgow) in 2018 and from an intercalated degree (University of Glasgow), in 2016. For the intercalated degree (specialising in Critical Care & Perioperative Medicine),  Alistair was awarded the 2015-16 Michael T Harrison Memorial Medal and Prize, the Martha Kernohan Medal, and the AC Forrester Prize.

PhD research area: The impact of the neighourhood bult environment on multimorbidity

University of Glasgow

Primary supervisor: Dr Frederick Ho (University of Glasgow)

Secondary supervisors: Dr Bhautesh Jani (University of Glasgow) and Professor Frances Mair (University of Glasgow)