Professor Mark Bellis is Director of the Centre for Public Health (at Liverpool John Moores University, www.cph.org.uk), the National Collaborating Centre for Drug Prevention and the North West Public Health Observatory (www.nwpho.org.uk) and. His areas of particular interest include drug and alcohol use, sexual health, violence and public health intelligence systems. Mark is a founding member of the World Health Organization Violence Prevention Alliance and continues to work with the WHO on links between substance use and violence. He has acted as an expert advisor on Drug Prevention and Harm Minimisation to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, the Council of Europe and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Mark is the lead UK academic for IREFREA (a EU collaborative examining risk behaviour and prevention in young people across Europe) and is also academic advisor to the UK Drugs Focal Point and Department of Health.

Professor Bellis is a board member of the national charities Alcohol Concern and CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) and a founder of Club Health (www.clubhealth.org.uk) an international initiative sharing good practice on nightlife health. His current research includes exploring substance use and sexual behaviour of young people travelling abroad, measuring public health problems relating to alcohol consumption and examining effective measures to reduce health-damaging behaviour. Mark has published over a hundred peer-reviewed articles, books and reports.