Lorraine read medicine at Manchester University and qualified in 1979.  Whilst at university she married so whilst the other students spent their elective years in exotic climes, she stayed in Manchester with her husband.

Initially working in general practice and community child and women's health, Lorraine found she wanted academic stimulation and joined the public health training scheme in 1985.  She became a member of the Faculty of Public Health in 1990 and appointed a Fellow of the Faculty in 2000.

Her work developed in her a passion for infectious disease epidemiology and control and in 1991 Lorraine was appointed Consultant in Communicable Disease Control for Tameside and Glossop Health Authority (later West Pennine), transferring to Greater Manchester Health Protection Unit with the formation of the Health Protection Agency.

Lorraine?s special interests are sexual health, gastrointestinal diseases and zoonoses (diseases caught from animals).  A Past President of the Public Health Section of Manchester Medical Society, her Presidential address on the health risks and benefits of living with cats combined her obsession with infectious diseases with her love of cats. Naturally she concluded that cats are beneficial to health!

Lorraine's most stressful day at work was 17 March 2002 when the first case of probable SARS in the UK was admitted to hospital in Manchester.  TV reporters were queuing outside her office to interview her and words of wisdom were transmitted round the world:  even friends in China saw her.

Lorraine's work is certainly all consuming:  she is the sexual health lead for the Health Protection Agency in the North West and Chair of the North West Syphilis Group.  She gained an MA in Health Care Law and Ethics in 2004 and is Chair of Tameside and Glossop Local Research Ethics Committee, one of the first Research Ethics Committees to be fully accredited under new national arrangements.  Added to all this Lorraine was recently appointed a Justice of the Peace.  Lorraine's two daughters, are both in the sixth form at Manchester High.