Paddy Costigan is Director of the Health Research Group. This is NatCen’s largest research group, with a strong track record in public health research. It works closely with a number of specialist collaborators, and makes extensive use of NatCen’s own fieldforce of qualified nurses who add an important extra dimension to the group’s work.

Paddy joined NatCen in 1990 following a career in commercial market research that started in 1973. He helped to pioneer NatCen's use of computer assisted interviewing in the early 1990s and has had responsibility for some of the organisation's largest projects, as well as taking on other senior management roles. Before taking over the Health Research Group in 2007 he headed another group handling a range of continuous and ad hoc surveys principally in the social security field.