Said Shahtahmasebi, Ph.D., currently lives in New Zealand. His career history in academia, UK National Health Service, and Private sector includes research and research methodology, research capacity building, and application of operational research and statistical modelling in nutrition and nutritional intervention, gerontology, adolescent health, and suicide. His interest in public health led him to view health outcomes as processes and therefore human behaviour as the backdrop for research or study design. Further evidence of the complexities in research and policy development as human behaviour were provided through an organisation-wide research capacity building exercise in New Zealand. Collaborating and leading across a number of disciplines led him to conceptualise a holistic approach and develop the proposal to apply the Good Life Project within the organisation. This proposal was awarded the prize for the most innovative and visionary project. The Good Life Model was published in 2006 [Shahtahmasebi, S. (2006) “The Good life: A holistic approach to the health of the population” ScientificWorldJournal 6:2117-32]. In 2004, he set up a consulting company and the Good Life Research Centre Trust (a charitable trust) to pursue his research interests in holistic living.

His main research interests are related to the development of the Good Life Model which encompasses all disciplines. He believes that a heavy emphasis on man-made science and scientific methods has made researchers, politicians and the public part of the problem rather than a solution. His publications, be it on suicide or adolescent smoking, drinking, dependency in old age or information technology, discuss issues relevant to the dynamics of human behaviour and highlight the importance of adopting appropriate methodologies to study and explore them. He has written a practical book [in press] covering some of these relevant issues with practical examples of the impact on results and hence on the process of policy formation if these issues are ignored in a study.