About us

About the GHC

We are an organisation made up of leading global experts in hygiene and associated disciplines. We distil scientific evidence to raise awareness about how hygiene can help to prevent the spread of infections and thereby impact global health outcomes.

Using expert scientific opinion, we advocate for the use of responsible hygiene practices in infection prevention, helping to shape public health policy and improve health outcomes at a global and local level.

A young boy in a red shirt washes his hands at a row of blue tiled sinks with blue pipes, concentrating on cleaning his hands thoroughly.

Since our formation in 2006, the GHC has published studies and undertaken research to raise awareness of how germs can spread in the home and community, and the role of hygiene in helping to reduce infection risk. More recently, we have started to understand the importance of behaviour change in forming long-lasting healthy hygiene habits.

The GHC provides informed responses to global hygiene crises and gives invaluable advice to stakeholder organisations and policy makers around the world to better protect the public from the spread of common infectious diseases.

GHC Experts

The GHC unifies global experts in various fields of health and hygiene to encourage behaviour change whilst providing specialist insights. We aim to highlight the benefits of improved hygiene, including handwashing and surface disinfection, both to human life and the global economy. We have a large panel of experts who have contributed to our research programmes, published papers, recorded podcasts and been involved in other media activities.

To work alongside our experts or for interview enquiries, please contact: admin@hygienecouncil.info

Experts currently working with the GHC include:

person wearing lab coat looking through microscope

Professor Emerita Elizabeth Scott, PhD (Chair)

Professor Scott is an applied microbiologist with more than 40 years of experience in hygiene and infection control issues in home and community settings. She is committed to developing infection control strategies that can be deployed to protect against community-based infections and reduce antibiotic resistance. Professor Scott has served as a scientific advisor on responsible consumer hygiene practices for the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics and as an advisor to World Health Organization (WHO) Europe on housing and health. She is also Deputy Chairperson and a serving member of the scientific board of the International Scientific Forum on Home Hygiene.

Expert Council

Professor Sally Bloomfield

Professor Bloomfield is a consultant in hygiene and infectious disease prevention and is Chairperson and a member of the scientific advisory board of the International Scientific Forum on Home Hygiene. She is an acknowledged expert in home hygiene, with more than 30 years’ experience in hygiene research and education. Professor Bloomfield was an honorary professor at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK, in 2003–2019. She is also an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health.

Professor Sabiha Essack

Professor Essack is the South African Research Chair in Antibiotic Resistance and One Health and a Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She is a leading expert in AMR and serves as a member of various international organisations expert groups and advisory boards, including the WHO Strategic and Technical Advisory Group for Antimicrobial Resistance (STAG-AMR), the International Centre for Antimicrobial Resistance Solutions (ICARS), the Joint Programming Initiative on AMR (JPIAMR) and the AMR Commission of the International Federation of Pharmacists (FIP).

Professor Thomas Szucs

Thomas Szucs is a Professor and Director of the European Centre of Pharmaceutical Medicine at the University of Basel, Switzerland. Previously, he was head of all health economics activities at the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine of the University of Zurich. His main research and teaching interests are pharmacoeconomics, pharma policy, health services research, health technology assessment and personalised medicine/pharmacogenetics.

Professor Matthew Freeman

Matthew Freeman is a Professor in the Gangarosa Department of Environmental Health at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. As a key driver of the Matthew Freeman Research Group, his research interests include designing theory-informed interventions of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) to mitigate the burden of neglected tropical diseases and understanding the drivers of behaviour change and programme sustainability for WASH initiatives.

Assistant Professor Kelly Ann Schmidtke

Dr Schmidtke is an honorary fellow of Warwick Business School and an assistant professor at the University of Health Sciences and Pharmacy in St Louis. Dr Schmidtke is the current lead in the GHC behaviour change programme. Her research interests include the enhancement of human health, wealth and well-being using light-touch and low-cost mechanisms and the application of psychological principles to experimental philosophy and real-world interventions.

Dr Richard Shaughnessy

Dr Shaughnessy is Programme Director of Indoor Air Quality Research at the University of Tulsa. His research interests include particulate matter, air cleaner evaluation, indoor chemistry, school and flooring studies, asthma/housing research, ozone-initiated indoor reaction and the resolution and remediation of bioaerosol-related problems.

Contact Us

The GHC enters partnerships with governments, academic institutions, leading health experts, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), non-profit organisations and healthcare organisations to help drive tangible and meaningful hygiene policy and behaviour change at both a local and global level.

Let’s discuss how we can work together; we would love to hear from you:

admin@hygienecouncil.info