Mansel Aylward

Professor Sir Mansel Aylward is Director of the Centre for Psychosocial Research, Occupational and Physician Health at Cardiff University School of Medicine. He was knighted in the 2010 New Year Honours. He was made a Freeman of the Borough of Merthyr Tydfil in 2013. He is Chair of Public Health Wales.

Early life and education

He was born in the Ex-servicemen's Club in the town in November 1942.^[1]

Career

From 1996 to April 2005 Aylward was Chief Medical Adviser, Medical Director and Chief Scientist of the UK Department for Work and Pensions and Chief Medical Adviser and Head of Profession at the Veteran’s Agency, Ministry of Defence.^[2] He was on the board of the Benefits Agency Medical Service in the 1990s.

Aylward's wife Angela was then involved in setting up a company called Mediprobe, trading under the name Nationwide Medical Examination Advisory Service Ltd., which arranged for the agency's doctors to work for insurance companies.^[3] He was involved in the establishment of the new Work Capability Assessment test. When he left the department he headed the UnumProvident Centre for Psychosocial and Disability Research, at Cardiff University,^[4]

Aylward has been criticized for giving academic credibility to the biopsychosocial model which was said to be the basis of the Cameron government’s disability benefits crackdown.^[5][6]

He is Chair of the advisory board of HCML a provider of rehabilitation and case management services to insurance companies and the corporate sector.^[7]

Aylward is chair of the Bevan Commission, a group of international experts which advises the Welsh Minister for Health and Social Services.^[8]

Publications

• Managing long-term worklessness in primary care: a focus group study, Cohen D, Marfell N, Webb K, Robling M, Aylward M, Occup Med (Lond), Volume 60 , 2 (March 2010) pp. 121–126
• Models of Sickness and Disability Applied to Common Health Problems, Waddell G et al, Royal Society of Medicine Press (2010)
• The Power of Belief: psychosocial influences on illness, disability and medicine, Edited by Halligan P W and Aylward M
• Beliefs: Clinical and vocational interventions; tackling psychological and social determinants of illness and disability, Edited by Halligan PW and Aylward M Oxford University Press (2006)
• The Scientific and Conceptual Basis of Incapacity Benefits, Gordon Waddell and Mansel Aylward, The Stationery Office 2005

External links

• Cardiff University

References