David Smith

David joined the Health Economics Research Centre (HERC) as a senior researcher in February 2023. His current research involves the development of health-economic models to evaluate the efficiency of infectious disease surveillance and control interventions, with a focus on antimicrobial resistance, Covid-19 and healthcare-associated infections. He is particularly interested in using transmission modelling within health-economic evaluations to inform intervention design, including the optimisation of SARS-CoV-2 surveillance programmes and the setting of reduction targets for inappropriate antibiotic prescribing. 

Prior to joining HERC, David was based at Institut Pasteur in France, where he used transmission modelling to study various topics in nosocomial infection control, including how antibiotic-induced microbiome dysbiosis impacts bacterial transmission, how testing strategies can be optimised for Covid-19 prevention, and how Covid-19 outbreaks influence the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Previously, David worked as a mathematical modeller at Public Health England, and was involved in projects including national evaluations of inappropriate antibiotic prescribing in English primary care, and of the health-economic burden of urinary catheter-associated infection in English hospitals. David holds a PhD in public health and biostatistics from Université Paris-Saclay, and an MSc in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Toronto.