Sally Davies (doctor)

Dame Sally Claire Davies (born 24 November 1949) is a British physician and academic administrator who was the Chief Medical Officer (United Kingdom) from 2010 to 2019 and Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department of Health from 2004 to 2016 and worked as a clinician specialising in the treatment of diseases of the blood and bone marrow. She was appointed Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, on 8 February 2019, effective from 8 October 2019. She is one of the founders of the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).

Early life and education

Davies was born on 24 November 1949 in Birmingham, England. Her father John Gordon Davies was an Anglican priest and theologian, and her mother Emily Mary Tordoff was a scientist: they both became academics at the University of Birmingham. She failed her eleven-plus exam but was nevertheless able to study at the private Edgbaston High School for Girls in Birmingham, where she excelled on the viola.

Davies studied medicine at Manchester Medical School at the University of Manchester where she graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MB ChB) degree in 1972 and later obtained a Master of Science (MSc) degree from the University of London.

Career and research

Davies described her early years in clinical practice as "brutalising" and had a four-year break from medicine as a "diplomat's wife" in Madrid, before returning to medical training at the end of the 1970s.

She became a consultant haematologist in 1985 at the Central Middlesex Hospital in Brent – a relatively deprived part of northwest London – and became Professor of Haemoglobinopathies there in 1997, by which time the hospital had been incorporated into Imperial College London.

Davies is expert in sickle cell disease: a blood disorder that mainly affects people of African heritage and causes painful 'crises' triggered by physical stress.

As well as a number of academic works, Davies is the author of the book ''The Drugs Don't Work: A Global Threat'' (2013).

Civil Service

Davies joined the Civil Service in 2004 to take up a research position in London and was soon promoted to Director-General of Research and Development at the Department of Health. In 2006, she expanded the National Health Service (NHS) research base through the creation of the National Institute for Health and Care Research (whose Strategy Board she chaired) and went on to become the Chief Scientific Adviser of the Department of Health and Social Care.

Chief Medical Officer

In June 2010 Davies was appointed interim Chief Medical Officer (United Kingdom) and was confirmed as the permanent holder of that position the following year – the first woman to hold the post. The Chief Medical Officer has a rank equivalent to Permanent secretary – the highest in the Civil Service.

The 'Chief' in the job title strictly refers to the incumbent's position as the most senior doctor within the ''Civil Service'' – the Ministry of Defence and the Department for Work and Pensions, for example, both employ doctors as civil servants, as of course does the Department of Health. Despite the name, the post of Chief Medical Officer has traditionally had no particular status within the medical profession as a whole – it has some parallels with the position of Surgeon General of the United States in the USA. However, with the huge expansion in the Department of Health's purview over the past two decades, the postholder has acquired substantial practical information influence over National Health Service policy.

Unusually for a British Chief Medical Officer, Davies does not have a background as a specialist in public health. Nevertheless, Davies has written and spoken extensively about the rise of antimicrobial resistance in medicine and animal husbandry, including carrying out work to raise its profile on the international scene. Davies delegated authoring and editing her statutory annual reports to other doctors and healthcare practitioners, although she wrote an introduction to each and oversaw their compilation. She is particularly concerned about excessive alcohol consumption, especially by young women – who, she told the BBC
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