Dr Mark McCann
- Research Fellow (MRC/CSO Social & Public Health Sciences Unit)
telephone:
0141 353 7588
email:
Mark.McCann@glasgow.ac.uk
pronouns:
He/him/his
MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow, Berkeley Square, 99 Berkeley Street, Glasgow, G3 7HR
Biography
Mark studied Psychology as his first degree, and then completed a Masters in Social Research Methods and a PhD in Social Epidemiology at Queen’s University Belfast. Mark completed a PGCert in Drug and Alcohol Studies at the University of Glasgow, and is also an alumnus of the European Educational Programme in Epidemiology Summer School and the Santa Fe Institute Complex Systems Summer School.
Mark's Masters and PhD projects linked administrative datasets – the 2001 Census, health records, death records and health care inspectorate records – to study mortality rates, and determinants of admission to care homes for older people, and my PGCert training involved a placement working in an Addaction community rehabilitation unit for those in recovery from drug and alcohol dependence.
After his PhD, Mark worked as the Statistician for the Institute of Child Care Research in Queen’s University Belfast. Here he worked on the Belfast Youth Development Study, on projects funded by Alcohol Research UK looking at how parental-adolescent relationships affect alcohol use, community gardening services for people with alcohol problems in Northern Ireland, and studies funded by the ESRC using administrative data to study mental health after bereavement, and developing a smartphone app to collect social network information. He also provided statistical support for evaluations of a range of health and social care interventions.
While at the MRC/CSO SPHSU, Mark's projects have focussed on how social networks influence alcohol, drug use, and offending/antisocial behaviour in adolescence; using social network analysis and an N of 1 study design to explore the determinants of alcohol and other drug use, before and after minimum unit pricing for alcohol was introduced in Scotland; and using network analysis to study change processes in the STASH intervention. Mark is part of the Complexity programme.
Alongside social networks, Mark’s other main area of interest is in networks of causes: using graphs and visualisation to understand risk factors for health behaviours, represent the ‘theory of change’ of health interventions, and developing experiments to study the effectiveness of interventions.
Research interests
Mark is interested in supervising PhD and Masters Students who would want to do work in one, or a combination of the following topics or areas. Mark would encourage those from disciplines not traditionally associated with public health (e.g. computing science, engineering, ecology) to get in contact to find out about interdisciplinary projects.
Substantive topics
Alcohol and other drug use, dependence and recovery.
Mental health, suicide, self-harm.
Family, friend, social and cultural influences on health and health behaviours.
Social isolation, social support and health.
Causal inference, systems methods to study health, and visualising complex causal processes.
Methodological areas
Social Network Analysis: Studying the formation of social networks, and how networks influence health outcomes and health behaviours. For example:
‘Peer pressure’ versus ‘choosing similar friends’ as explanations for friendship group structure and drinking & drug use among school pupils.
Social support and social isolation, and the influence they have on health behaviours and outcomes.
Methodology for collecting data on social networks.
Complex systems science: Understanding the interaction of individuals with each other, their environment, or with organisations leads to complex structures and patterns at the
system level, and methods for understanding systems. Systems mapping and group model building.
Statistical methods: The application of advanced and novel statistical methods to the topics outlined above. For example:
Multilevel modelling, Latent Class, Latent Profile, and Latent Transition Analysis, Directed acyclic graphs and causal inference methods, Simulation Investigation for Empirical Network Analysis (SIENA).
Grants
Grants and Awards listed are those received whilst working with the University of Glasgow.
- SPHSU/MRC EU - Participatory Systems Mapping
Medical Research Council
2021 - 2021
- A systems approach to exploring syndemic health and social condition clustering among individuals who experience a drug-related death: developmental work for co-produced intervention(s)
Chief Scientist Office
2020 - 2022
- Quinquennial Funding for Social and Public Health Sciences Unit
Medical Research Council
2020 - 2025
- PHASE: The Population HeAlth Simulation nEtwork
Medical Research Council
2019 - 2023
- Transdisciplinary Research for the Improvement of Youth Mental Public Health (TRIUMPH) Network
Economic and Social Research Council
2018 - 2022
- An N of 1 study of the psychosocial determinants of `stopping, `switching and `seeking treatment behaviour following MUP implementation
Alcohol Research UK
2017 - 2018
- Exploring the teachable moment for alcohol reduction in breast clinics: formative work to inform intervention design, development, and process evaluation 516776101 and MR/P016960/1
Medical Research Council
2017 - 2018
- Harmonising alcohol-related outcomes data across the UK & Ireland
Public Health Agency
2015 - 2016
- Variation and Determinants of Novel Psychoactive Substance (NPS) Use: Potential Implications for Policy and Practice
National Institute for Health Research
2015 - 2016
- Know your own numbers (KYON): Adding primary prevention to the NHS Breast Screening Programme
Cancer Research UK
2014 - 2015
- Scoping study for Deaf BSL User's cancer risks and prevention
Cancer Research UK
2014 - 2015
- ESRC-IAA: Developing complex systems methods capacity in NHS Health Scotland
Economic and Social Research Council
2014 - 2019
- MRC SPHSU/GU Transfer Fellowships
Medical Research Council
2013 - 2021
Supervision
Sebastián Martinez Bustos - Causal Inferential Dynamic Network Analysis for Public Health
Martin Anderson - Social networks and identity in Scotland's first 'recovery village' for Alcohol or other Drug (AOD) addiction.
Joe Tay – From the Individual, to the Social, to the Political: Older People Who Use Drugs and Deliberative Democracy
- Anderson, Martin
. - Milicev, Jelena
Using social network analysis to understand social support, wellbeing and academic progress of postgraduate researchers - a mixed method approach
Teaching
Mark teaches on quantitative research methods, and advanced quantitative methods including delivering a National Centre for Research Methods Course on Multilevel Modelling.