Cam Donaldson

Donaldson was born in Glasgow.[3] His father was a trade union activist, working as a stereotyper at the Scottish Daily Express. His mother was a comptometer operator. He has two sisters and a brother.

In the early 1970s, Express Newspapers moved his father's job to Manchester. Not having supported a football team in Scotland, and due to the famous Scottish footballer, Denis Law, finishing his career there, Donaldson picked Manchester City, and has remained a lifelong fan of the club. Having been educated at Bishopbriggs High School and Cheadle Moseley School for Boys, Donaldson went to study Economics at the University of Nottingham (1979–1982), immediately followed by a master's degree in Health Economics at the University of York. The interest in health came from wanting to apply economics to the public sector, and health, at the time, was a new and interesting area of exploration.

Donaldson worked as a research fellow during the first year of the Centre for Health Economics (CHE) at the University of York. Here he met two of the three main collegial influences on his career – Stephen Birch (now at McMaster University) and the late Alan Maynard (the first director of CHE).

From York, Donaldson jumped into multidisciplinary environments in the (then) Health Care Research Unit at Newcastle University (1984–1988) and the Department of Public Health at the University of Sydney (his first Lectureship; 1989–1990). He then returned to Scotland to spend most of the 1990s as deputy director of the Health Economics Research Unit at the University of Aberdeen (1991–98). Initially, he deputised to part-time Director, Professor Gavin Mooney, one of the 'founding fathers' of health economics,[4] who persuaded Donaldson to undertake a PhD under his supervision. He became a professor at Aberdeen in 1996 and, for five years of his tenure at Aberdeen, served as a national organiser of the Health Economists' Study Group (HESG), the UK body for health economics researchers.[5]

From 1998 to 2002, Donaldson worked as the Svare Chair in Health Economics at the University of Calgary. Here, he built a group of health economics researchers, holding an appointment there until 2011, visiting frequently. Whilst in Calgary he established the Health Economics Methods Group of the Cochrane Collaboration with Luke Vale (of the University of Aberdeen, now at Newcastle) and Miranda Mugford (University of East Anglia) and acted as co-convenor from 1998 to 2008.

In 2001, the Health Foundation (a major charitable funder in the UK) announced a national competition for a chair in Health Economics. Any university applying had to team up with a named candidate. Donaldson's colleagues (particularly Professors John and Senga Bond) at Newcastle invited him to be their candidate, and together they won the funding of £3m. What made Donaldson equally proud, however, was that three of the candidates who made it through to the final five were Ph.D. students of Mooney.

At Newcastle, as well as building another significant group of health economists, Donaldson became the inaugural director of the Institute of Health and Society (from 2006 to 2010). There he worked closely with Professor Michael Jones-Lee and Rachel Baker, now Professor of Health Economics and director of the Yunus Centre for Social Business & Health at Glasgow Caledonian University, in translating Jones-Lee's work on valuing human life and safety into the health arena, leading major projects for the Department of Health in England and the European Commission.

In 2010 he took up the Yunus Chair at Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) where he established the Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health. He was intrigued by the mission (for the 'Common Weal') of this post-1992 university, and increasingly concerned that, despite world-class research at top universities and world-class health care provision in the National Health Service, health inequalities were not only persisting but growing. The idea of thinking about how non-health focused initiatives, such as social enterprise and fair credit, operating in the most deprived communities, could improve health through enhanced social cohesion, and working with Nobel Peace Laureate Muhammad Yunus on such issues, drew him back to Scotland. GCU's Yunus Centre has attracted international attention and substantial research funding since its inception, most notably from the UK's Research Councils, the Wellcome Trust and the National Institute for Health Research.

Donaldson has won several competitive personal awards for his research, such as:

• Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research, Senior Fellow (1998–2002);[17]
• Canadian Institutes for Health Research Senior Investigator (2000–2002);[18]
• Health Foundation Chair in Health Economics (2002–2010);[19]
• Economic and Social Research Council, Advanced Institute for Management Research, Public Services Fellow (2003–2004)[20]
• National Institute for Health Research, Inaugural Senior Investigator (2008–2012)[21]

Donaldson lives in Glasgow with his wife and partner (since 1992), Diane, who is a successful university administrator. They have two children (Graham and Callum Imray) and a grandson (Dominic).