Gilles is a Birmingham GP and GP appraiser, with a particular interest in health and health care inequalities as well as global, migrant and mental health. He was a long serving member of the Health Inequalities Standing Group of the RCGP and is a current member of the Adoption and Impact Reference Panel of the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE).
He graduated as a medical doctor in the Netherlands where he trained in the programme for hospital and community health care in remote and under-resourced areas in low and middle income countries. This prepared him to work in patient-facing care and public health in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Botswana, including in circumstances of violent conflict. Before, as a student and junior doctor, he worked part-time in freelance Dutch language journalism on West and Southern African and US politics, higher education and development. Gilles was a trustee of WEMOS, a global health policy and advocacy NGO; The Johannes Wier Foundation for Health and Human Rights and of Medact. He has represented Dutch and British non-governmental organisations at trade and health-related meetings of UN organisations and other international events.
Before moving to England, he qualified and worked as a clinical public health specialist and epidemiologist for The Hague City Health (GGD Den Haag) in the Netherlands. Further academic interests include global aspects of commercialisation of health care, including use of NHS and other health care data; Access to medicines, pharmaceutical R&D and other health technologies, intellectual property rights and global justice; global mental health and quality assurance in health care and other organisations.
Gilles is married to a GP and they have 3 children.