Cam held the world's only Yunus Chair from 2010 to 2024, during which time (2016 to 2021) he also served as GCU’s Pro Vice-Chancellor Research. Cam's interests include: eliciting patients’ and public preferences for health care; development of priority-setting frameworks for use in local health and social care settings; economic evaluation of innovations in clinical and public health practice; microfinance, social business and social enterprise as public health initiatives.
Cam has been involved in the following recent programmes of research:
- Developing and evaluating economic and ethico-legal frameworks for priority setting in health and social care, having received funding from Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Canadian Health Services Research Foundation, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Department of Health and Social Care in England, and, currently, the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government Health and Social Care Directorate.
- FinWell projects on financial lives, health, and well-being among low-income individuals. FinWell Glasgow was funded by the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government Health and Social Care Directorate; FinWell London by Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity, and FinWell Covid by the Economic and Social Research Council.
- Common Health Assets: a mixed methods realist evaluation and economic appraisal of how community-led organisations impact the health and wellbeing of people living in deprived areas, funded by the National Institute for Health Research and following from the CommonHealth research programme, which Cam led from 2014 to 2019, funded by the Medical Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council.
- Tools to value health outcomes in pediatric populations, funded by the Medical Research Future Fund of the Government of Australia and following earlier projects funded by Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council (Values in Priority Setting), the European Commission (European Value of a QALY, or EuroVaQ) and the Department of Health and Social Care in England (Social Value of a QALY, or SVQ).
- Public values, Universal Basic Income and health: developing a mixed-methods study to elicit and deliberate public values for Universal Basic Income and comparator policies in relation to their impact on population health and health inequalities, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research.
Cam first became a Professor of Health Economics at the University of Aberdeen in 1996, before going on to hold the Svare Chair at the University of Calgary (1998 to 2002) and the Health Foundation Chair at Newcastle University (2002 to 2010, and won in a UK-wide funding competition). From 2023 to 2026, Cam was part-time Professor of Health Economics at the National University of Australia.
As well as the Health Foundation Chair, Cam’s work has been recognised through a number of other competitive awards and distinctions:
- 2008 to 2012 National Institute for Health Research, Inaugural Senior Investigator
- 2003 to 2004 Public Service Fellow, ESRC Advanced Institute of Management Research
- 2000 to 2002 Canadian Institutes for Health Research Senior Investigator
- 1998 to 2003 Senior Scholar Award, Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research
Cam has served on several policy-related committees, such as chairing the FPA’s Expert Panel on the Economics Sexual Health in England and membership of the NICE Appraisal Committee. He has chaired or been a member of several research committees at MRC, NIHR and the Wellcome Trust. He has served as Associate Editor of Social Business and on the Editorial Boards of Health Economics, Social Science and Medicine and Health Policy.
Cam has also served as organiser of the Health Economists’ Study Group, Secretary of the International Society on Priorities in Health and on the Board of the International Health Economics Association.
Since 2013, he has been Chair of the Scientific Committee of the annual Social Business Academia Conference, the main meeting for the growing international academic network of Yunus Social Business Centres.
In 2022, Cam was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and, in 2025, was listed by Research.com in the top 300 Economics and Finance Scientists (28 in the UK) of all time, by citation and publications. Cam is also listed in Stanford University's Top 2% Scientists' List.