David Strain (He/him)

Prof David Strain is an Associate Professor of Cardiometabolic Health at the University of Exeter Medical School, an honorary consultant in medicine for the older adult, Head of the academic department for healthcare for older adults and the chair of the British Medical Association’s Board of Science.

In September 2024, he was appointed as the inaugral Thematic Research Lead for Health to the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. This new UK Parliamentary role encourages and facilitates the translation of new UK based healthcare research into Parliamentary policy more rapidly. 

Clinically, he is the academic lead and co-clinical lead of the healthcare for older adults department and the stroke department. He runs a community diabetes service for the older adult, works as an in-patient stroke consultant, and participates in the myalgic encephalitis/chronic fatigue service. This latter work lead to him becoming the medical advisor to action for ME, participating in the All Party Parliamentary Group about ME/CFS and most recently leading the Health Education England's work packages aiming to improve understanding and management of this disease.

His main research focus is the health of older adults with diabetes; ensuring the right patient gets the right treatment. This includes research across the spectrum from mechanistic studies in the biologically young to pragmatic trials in the frail elderly population. He has an expertise in exploring the mechanism that some medications give benefits for people with diabetes beyond their effect on sugar and blood pressure, to determine if we can better select the medication for each patient. He has performed the only study to date demonstrating the feasibility of individualizing targets for older adults across Europe. This has informed the new UK guidance document for the management of older adults with diabetes and frailty, of which he was lead author. Within this remit, he engages in multidisciplinary research portfolio, supervising renal physicians, cardiologists, radiographers, basic scientists as well as geriatricians.

His role in global drug development advisory boards, and ability to translate complex mechanisms using readily interpretable analogies has earned him a global reputation for providing relevant comprehensible lectures. As a result he has presented his work in over 110 countries, including USA, Canada, across Europe, the Middle East, India, Latin America, Africa, China, Russia and Australasia.

Since March 2020, he has been heavily involved in the COVID-19 response team. Within the BMA he has led the academic response to risk assessment of healthcare workers and been responsible for several briefing statements such as position statement on face masks and covid late complications, whilst being the Clinical Lead for COVID services at the Royal Devon & Exeter NHS Foundation Trust. He has participated in the NHS long COVID Taskforce, has given evidence at the All-Party Parliamentary Group long COVID meetings, and has presented at several meetings including the Society of Occupational Medicine, the Westminster Health Policy and the Institute of Physics