Sheila Macdonald Bird

Name: Sheila Macdonald Bird (nee Gore)
Position: Senior Scientist, MRC Biostatistics Unit, CAMBRIDGE CB2 2SR and Visiting Professor, Department of Statistics and Modelling Science, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.
Date of birth: 18th May 1952   
Qualifications: MA (Joint Mathematics-Statistics, 1st class Honours, University of Aberdeen), PhD. (University of Aberdeen), CStat.
Awards: Royal Statistical Society’s Guy Medal in Bronze (1989) and   Bradford Hill Medal (2000); Glaxo Wellcome Medal of the  Royal Society of Apothecaries of London (2001).

Other professional responsibilities: UK delegate on Scientific Committee for European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction; statistician-member of Home Office Science and Technology Reference Group (chaired by permanent secretary); member of Appraisals Committee for National Institute of Clinical Excellence; chair of Royal Statistical Society’s Working Party on Performance Monitoring in the Public Services. Guest Editor for Special Issue of  Statistical Methods in Medical Research on ‘Quantitative Understanding of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies, such as BSE and vCJD’
Member of Council of Royal Statistical Society.

Recent keynote lectures: ‘Drugs, illegal addiction: HIGH TIME for Bradford Hill’s scientific method’ (7th Bradford Hill Memorial Lecture, 1998); ‘Trials and Tribulations: costs and effectiveness’ (9th Wellcome Lecture to Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London, 2001); ‘Cost-effectiveness: sorted, or on trial?’ (British Association for the Advancement of Science, 2002); ‘Drugs-related deaths soon after release from prison’ (Public Health Association of Australia, 2003); ‘Europe’s rapid post-mortem BSE/TSE testing: results and impact’ (International Biometrics Conference, Australia 2004).

Publications: Two books (one as author, one as co-editor), including Statistics in Practice  (British Medical Association,1982), and from 1999: three book chapters, five single-author publications, five scientific opinions or working party reports, forty-four joint-author publications and various notes and reviews, including papers in British Journal of Criminology, Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, Addiction, Journal of Forensic Science and Journal of Epidemiology & Biostatistics.

Recent selected publications: 
Gore SM. Suicide in prisons: reflection of the communities served, or exacerbated risk? British Journal of Psychiatry 1999; 318: 938 – 939.
Gore SM and Drugs Survey Investigators’ Consortium. More effective monitoring needed of young people’s use of illegal drugs: meta-analysis of UK trends. British Journal of Criminology 1999; 39: 575 – 584.
Gore SM, Bird AG, Cameron SO, Hutchinson SJ, Burns SM, Goldberg DJ. Prevalence of Hepatitis C carriage in Scottish prisons: Willing Anonymous Salivary Hepatitis C surveillance linked to self-reported risks. Quarterly Journal of Medicine 1999; 92: 25 – 32.
Hutchinson SJ, Gore SM, Taylor A, Goldberg DJ, Frischer M. Extent and contributing factors of drug expenditure of injectors in Glasgow. British Journal of Psychiatry 2000; 176: 166 – 172.
Bird SM, Goldberg DJ, Hutchinson SJ. Projecting severe sequelae of injection-related Hepatitis C virus epidemic in UK. Part I: Critical Hepatitis C and injector data, Part II: Preliminary UK estimates of prevalent injection-related Hepatitis C carriers, and derivation of progression rates to liver cirrhosis by gender and age at HCV infection. Journal of Epidemiology and Biostatistics 2001; 6: 243 – 277.
Bird SM, Leigh Brown AL. Criminalisation of HIV transmission: implications for public health in Scotland. British Medical Journal 2001; 323: 1174 – 1177.
Bird SM, Pearson G, Strang J. Rationale and cost-efficiency compared for saliva or urine testing and behavioural inquiry among three offender populations: injectors in the community, arrestees and prisoners. Journal of Epidemiology and Biostatistics/Journal of Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention 2002; 7: 37 – 47.
Bird SM, Hutchinson SJ. Male drugs-related deaths in the fortnight after release from prison: Scotland 1996-1999. Addiction 2003; 98: 185 – 190.
Royal Statistical Society Working Party on Performance Monitoring in the Public Services (chair: Professor SM Bird). Performance Indicators: Good, Bad, and Ugly (see www.rss.org.uk) London: Royal Statistical Society, 23 October 2003.
Bird SM. Prescribing sentence: high time for evidence-based justice. Lancet 2004 (accepted for publication).

Recent selected grants awarded:
Years Source and topic Amount
1992-1997 Medical Research Council: Biostatistical Initiative in support of AIDS/HIV studies in Scotland £263K
1997-1999 Medical Research Council: Contribution of contaminated feed, maternal and lateral transmission to incidence of BSE in bovines born after 1989 £133K
1996-1999 EC Network for HIV/Hepatitis in Prisons: WASH surveillance at Lowmoss and Aberdeen Prisons, and overdose deaths in recently released prisoners £  21K
2003 EC Network for HIV/Hepatitis in Prisons: Database of Airborne Initiative clients, 2000-2002, to facilitate master-indexed database linkage £    6K
2001-2002 Food Standards Agency and Medical Research Council: gender and age-specific UK dietary BSE exposure from beef MRM and brain contamination of head meat – for use in vCJD projections £ 37K