Board of Trustees

Xavier Bosch-Capblanch

Xavier Bosch-Capblanch is a Medical Doctor, Public Health Consultant, faculty member of the Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+) and Ass. Professor at the University of Basel, with 30 years experience in international health, 10 of which living in rural Sub-Saharan Africa settings. He is interested in methods to bring robustness to health systems research evidence and vaccination. He has led numerous initiatives in research, technical assistance and teaching, and has and is involved in consultative forums, such as the WHO Immunisation Practices Advisory Group and Immunisation Agenda 2030 Monitoring and Evaluation Working Group. More information about Xavier can be found here.

On becoming an Evidence Aid Trustee in 2022, Xavier said “In a world with growing, deeper and more extensive humanitarian crises, affected populations cannot tolerate interventions which are not rooted into sound evidence and decision-makers and implementers cannot ethically act without the required evidence supporting their decisions and plans. Evidence Aid is the most comprehensive and systematic effort to bridge the gap between evidence and action in the humanitarian context. It is a profound honour to being able to contribute to the full development of Evidence Aid.“

Mike Clarke – Research Director Emeritus

Mike Clarke is one of the founders of Evidence Aid, helping to establish the initiative in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004. He is Professor and Director of the Northern Ireland Methodology Hub at the Centre for Public Health in Queen’s University Belfast. Before this, he was Director of the UK Cochrane Centre. Mike has worked on several large randomized trials and dozens of systematic reviews in a wide range of areas. As our volunteer Research Director Emeritus, Mike has advisory oversight on all Evidence Aid’s work and is also the Chair of our Board of Trustees.

Mike explained that: “I was one of the people who established Evidence Aid following the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004, in order to improve access to evidence for those in the humanitarian and disaster sectors and am proud to have continued to be part of this effort to meet this ongoing, substantial need“.

Euan Crawshaw

Euan Crawshaw is the International Programme Director at ShelterBox. He joined Evidence Aid while he was Humanitarian Lead at Oxfam Great Britain. He has significant experience in humanitarian work, having led multi-country and multi-functional teams to deliver large scale emergency operations overseas over the past 14 years.  Euan has lived and worked in many different countries and contexts including  Yemen, Gaza, Lebanon, South Sudan, Somalia and the Philippines.

Deborah Dixon – Treasurer

Deborah Dixon is Global Editorial Director, Science and Medical Journals at Oxford University Press. With extensive global experience in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) journals and educational publishing, Deborah was previously Vice President, Global Publishing Director, Health Sciences, at John Wiley & Sons. She is involved in policy making related to publishing, along with science funding bodies and universities. Deborah was one of the founding Trustees of Evidence Aid.

Philip Davies

Philip Davies was a Lecturer in Social and Political Sciences at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Kellogg College from 1992-2003. Subsequently, he was a senior civil servant in the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury, and Deputy Director of the Government Social Research Service. Currently, Philip is Executive Director of Oxford Evidentia, a professional development and consulting company that promotes evidence-based policy.

Lisa Robinson

Lisa Robinson is Head of Advisory at BBC Media Action, the international development charity of the BBC.  She leads on work related to resilience and humanitarian response, aiming to advance the use of creative media and communication to reduce disaster risk and to help people cope in emergencies. Lisa co-founded the Communication with Disaster Affected Communities (CDAC) Network and sits on advisory boards for leading international DRR institutions. She is also an Adjunct Professor for USC’s Annenberg School for Communication.

On becoming an Evidence Aid Trustee in 2022, Lisa said “Given acute humanitarian needs around the world, we have to ensure that every effort counts.  Evidence Aid’s top-quality work enables humanitarian actors to base decisions on the best available evidence to save lives.  It’s an organisation with a reputation for excellence and punching above their weight.  I’m proud to support them as a Trustee.”

Michael Stone

Michael Stone is a leading international specialist in the humanitarian sector. He has substantial experience of directing large scale emergency response operations with NGOs, the international Red Cross, and the United Nations. He has chaired coordination bodies, evaluated programmes for the Red Cross, EU, UN and Governments, prepared policy papers for senior politicians, and given specialist talks in numerous forums. Michael is President of the Alumni Association of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent, the world’s largest humanitarian organisation.

Michael joined Evidence Aid because it’s key objective was to improve decision making in emergency response. No Trustee, in 2018, had a background in this area. As an international expert in humanitarian emergency response, he became a Trustee in order to fill this gap.

Rik Viergever

Rik Viergever has worked for at WHO in multiple areas of health research policy, like research priority setting, clinical trial standards, evidence-informed policymaking and the Global Observatory on Health R&D. He is a medical doctor who also holds degrees in (astro)physics and international public health. He has two PhDs, one in the area of health services research, focusing on care for marginalized populations, and one in the area of policy research, focusing on prioritization of research and the best ways to do that. He has lived and worked in multiple European, Asian and Middle-Eastern countries and today works as a public health consultant and social entrepreneur. Among others, he is the founder of charity donation platform Give for Good.

On joining the Evidence Aid Board, Rik said “I applied to become a trustee because I think both evidence synthesis and evidence translation have the capacity to greatly change entire fields of practice. We have seen this in medicine, and it is slowly starting to trickle onwards to other fields as well. I’m enthusiastic about trying to bring that in greater degree than it currently exists for  humanitarian emergency and disaster contexts.”