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I am a social scientist and a graduate of London University. I joined LSHTM in 1993 after holding posts at the Open University, the Family Planning Association, the Health Education Authority, and St Marys Hospital Medical School, Imperial College.  At LSHTM, I have served on Senate, School Council and as Head of the Department of Public Health, Environments and Society.

My focus is on policy relevant research. I am best known for having founded and co-led the National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal). In 1996 I  set up the Centre for Sexual and Reproductive Health Research whose work has been at the forefront of public health policy in sexual and reproductive health in the past three decades. We have provided the evidence base for the development and evaluation of many of the public health interventions enacted in that time, including  HIV AIDS Public Education campaigns in the UK and in Europe, HIV prevention strategies in prisons, regulation of  blood donation by men who have sex with men, and  the National Teenage Pregnancy Strategy.  In 2006,  I led the team carrying out the first global study of sexual behaviour commissioned and published by the Lancet and the WHO, repeated in 2019.

I am an elected Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Health, and the Academy of Social Sciences. I have served as chair and member of a range of advisory committees including those of, nationally, the Medical Research Council. the Economic and Social Research Council, the Department of Health and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and, internationally, the World Bank, the World Health Organization, the European Commission and the International Planned Parenthood Federation. I am currently a Trustee of the Population Council,  a member of the Council's Executive Committee and Chair of the Technical Advisory Group.