Summary
Sheila M. Bird OBE FRSE FMedSci is an Emeritus Programme Leader at the MRC Biostatistics Unit. Sheila was a Programme Leader at the Unit from 1980 - 2015, leading research on the design of record-linkage studies across health registers and administrative databases to ascertain key event-dates (such of hospitalization, incarceration, drug treatment, or sentencing) for national 'virtual' cohorts of hard-to-reach individuals. Record linkage studies in Scotland were central to Sheila's work (with others) on the late sequelae of Hepatitis C virus infection and on the morbidity and mortality of opioid addiction.
Sheila's team first quantified the very high risk of drugs-related death in the fortnight after prison-release, in response to which Sheila and colleagues proposed a prison-based randomized controlled trial of naloxone, the opioid antagonist, for prisoners-on-release who had a history of heroin injection. Sheila's assessment of misuse of statistics in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and BMJ series ‘Statistics in Question’ led to statistical guidelines for contributors to medical journals.
During 2005-09, Sheila was the Royal Statistical Society's (RSS) vice-president for external affairs and introduced both the RSS's statistical seminars for journalists and awards for statistical excellence in journalism: for which, in 2010, she was awarded the RSS's Chambers Medal. Following swine-flu, on which she wrote a series of articles for Straight Statistics, Sheila has led the Royal Statistical Society's campaign for legislation to end the late registration of deaths in England and Wales where fact-of-death is not registered for at least six months for one in five premature deaths (aged 5-44 years). From 2006 to 2014, Sheila and the late Colonel Clive Fairweather CBE, reported 20-weekly on military fatality rates in Afghanistan by nationality and cause.
In 2011, Sheila was appointed OBE for her services to social science and, in 2012, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
