Dr Gail Carson specialized in adult infectious diseases in the UK. In 2012 she moved from Public Health England, to help set up the global federation of the hospital based clinical research networks called ISARIC. She was frustrated with trying to provide fellow clinicians during outbreaks with clinical management advice based on weak evidence. ISARIC was set up to try to make sure that clinical research is done and done quickly during outbreaks. ISARIC responded to COVID19 via CoCIN and ISARIC4C, via a pre-approved Clinical Characterisation Protocol (CCP) in the UK and internationally with a database hosting nearly 1,000,000 patient entries from multiple countries resulting in >50 collaborative publications. During and since the height of the pandemic Dr Carson has focused on supporting the ISARIC LMIC partners.
Dr Carson graduated from Edinburgh Medical School in 1994, and completed her infectious disease training in Manchester in 2007. Over the past 20+ years she has worked with WHO at country level responding to outbreaks e.g. VHFs, regional office on a new regional strategy for Europe and Geneva for SARS, 2003 and the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. During the same time frame she has sat on multiple WHO committees and working groups. In 2016 she was elected to the Steering Committee of the WHO hosted Global Outbreak Alert & Response Network (GOARN) and asked to set up the research arm of GOARN. In 2018 she was elected Deputy Chair and became Chair in 2022 after leading the process to define the new GOARN strategy.
In 2018, she was awarded a Distinction in the Diploma of Organisational Leadership at the Said Business School, University of Oxford. Dr Carson is an Associate Fellow of the Oxford University Business School.
All of the above resulted in recognition in the King’s Honours List in 2023 by being awarded an OBE for her contributions to global health.
