John Fox
(Anthony) John Fox is a British statistician, who has worked both in the public service and academia.
He was born on April 25 1946, the son of Fred Frank Fox OBE. He was educated at Dauntsey's School, University College London (BSc) and Imperial College London (PhD). He was a statistician at the Employment Medical Advisory Service, 1970-5 and then the Medical Statistics Division of the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys (OPCS) until 1979. In the latter job, he set up the England and Wales Longitudinal Survey, which monitors the health, address changes and fertility of a 1% sample of the population of England and Wales over time for statistical purposes.
During 1980-8, he was Professor of Social Statistics at City University, building up his department into one of the world's leading centres for social statistics. He returned to OPCS in 1988 as the United Kingdom Chief Medical Statistician. In 1990, he took on the additional post of visiting professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
In 1996, following the creation of the Office for National Statistics (ONS)(into which OPCS was incorporated), cuts in the senior Civil Service meant that his responsibilities were widened to include demographic statistics and he became Director of the Census, Population and Health Group there. In 1999, he moved to the Department of Health as Director of Statistics. Due to further cuts in senior statistical posts in the Civil Service, he soon became the most senior government statistician outside the ONS.
In 2004, be became the "Change Manager" responsible for setting up the new Health and Social Care Information Centre, which officially came into existence on 1 April 2005. This centre is formally a Health Authority of the English National Health Service, so he and his staff are technically no longer Civil Servants. He will not become the permanent Chief Executive, as he is expected to retire in 2006. The permanent Chief Executive will be Denise Lievesley from July 2005.
He has published several books on mortality and health statistics.