Maynard, Alan

Alan Maynard is a well-known, highly respected health economist in the United Kingdom. Maynard has been instrumental in initiating policies for the UK National Health Service (NHS). Specifically, he proposed the establishment of the General Practitioner Fund Holding, from which physicians are given budgets to fund their activities as well as secondary care for their patients. He also proposed that the NHS only pay for pharmaceutical drugs that their manufacturers could demonstrate to be cost-effective and efficient. This proposal ultimately led to the formation of the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE).

Maynard is a professor of health economics and the director of the York Health Policy Group in the Department of Health Sciences at the University of York. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia.

Maynard was educated at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, earning first-class honors in economics in 1967. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of York in 1968. He did his postgraduate work at the University of York; while there, he was introduced to the field of public expenditure, which ignited his interest in healthcare. He taught economics as an assistant lecturer and then lecturer at the University of Exeter from 1968 to 1971. From there, he returned to the University of York as a lecturer in economics. In 1977, he became senior lecturer at York, where he founded the Graduate Program in Health Economics, serving as its director until 1983. In 1983, he became a professor of economics and the founding director of the Centre for Health Economics at York. From 1995 to 1996, he served as the secretary and chief executive of the Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust, a foundation that funds research in health policy. In 1996, he returned to the University of York as a professor of health economics and the director of the York Health Policy Group.

Maynard was made an honorary member of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine of the Royal Colleges of Physicians in 1993. He was elected president of the International Health Economic Association (iHEA) in 1999. He was named a fellow at the Academy of Medical Sciences for the United Kingdom in 2000. In 2002, he was named adjunct professor at the Centre for Health Economics in Research and Evaluation at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia. He has been awarded honorary doctorate degrees from the Universities of Aberdeen (2003) and Northumbria (2006).

He is the founding editor of Health Economics and has written more than 250 scholarly articles and 10 books. He also is a member of the editorial boards of the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Pharmacoeconomics, Health Manpower Management, and the Drug and Alcohol Review.

In addition to Maynard's academic experience, he has served the NHS as a member of the York Health Authority (1983–1991), nonexecutive director of the York National Health Service Hospital (1991–1997), and has been the chair of the hospital since 1997.

Maynard has provided consultant services for the UK Department for International Development, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the World Bank on healthcare issues in Cyprus, Greece, Thailand, Brazil, Mexico, China, Botswana, South Africa, Bolivia, Chile, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, Russia, Malawi, Serbia, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine.

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