Professor Jim McManus

Professor Jim McManus is an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford. Jim is National Director of Health and Wellbeing for Public Health Wales and also Deputy Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board for the UK Prevention Research Partnership. Previously he was Director of Public Health for Hertfordshire and President of the Association of Directors of Public Health.

Jim was a Health Foundation Generation Q Fellowship and undertook postgraduate studies in Leadership at Ashridge Business School and has recently completed a further leadership programme jointly run by the Universidad Francisco de Vitoria, Madrid and a group of Roman universities. Jim is a Chartered Psychologist, Chartered Scientist, UKPHR Registered Public Health Specialist, Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health of the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Fellow of the British Psychological Society.

Jim seeks to work across disciplines and identify real-world solutions to problems which benefit from different disciplines adding to and critiquing each other. He has over thirty years of public sector experience and has worked in the public, commercial and not for profit sectors.

Jim’s key research interests are on leadership as a service to society; public policy which improves and protects the health or marginalized populations, and on implementing healthy public policy. He is particularly interested in bringing diverse disciplines into dialogue on these areas, from natural through social and human sciences including theology.

Jim has worked in local government, the third sector, the NHS and commercial sector. Outside work Jim is a Trustee of the Behavioural Science and Public Health Network, a Trustee of St Joseph’s Hospice, Hackney, a pro-bono adviser to PositiveFaith, an HIV peer-support charity and Chair of the Prison Advice and Care Trust which provides support and care including health support in two-thirds of prisons in England and Wales.

In 2022 he was made a Doctor of Science Honoris Causa by the University of Hertfordshire and elected a Fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion for his work on health, psychology and faith. He was presented with the President’s Medal from the Faculty of Public Health. In 2011 he was awarded the Good Samaritan Medal for Excellence in Healthcare by Pope Benedict XVI, the highest honour for healthcare the Vatican can award.

Jim is a Visiting Professor at the University of Hertfordshire and at the University of Bangor. He is an Honorary Vice-President of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health.