With his colleagues Professor David Leon and Vladimir Shkolnikov, he has contributed important new insights into the adverse health consequences of rapid social and political transition, the entry of the international tobacco corporations into these new markets, and the role of alcohol, and especially substances such as aftershaves (odekolon) in the high levels of premature mortality seen in this region.

More recently, his work on social change has extended into a large body of research on the health effects of the post-2007 financial crisis, jointly with Dr David Stuckler.

When Lord Darzi proposed the establishment of Polyclinics in England McKee wrote a paper with Bernd Rechel of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in which they observed: Polyclinics were a centrepiece of the Soviet model of healthcare delivery, but many countries of Central and Eastern Europe have abandoned them over the past two decades in favour of a system of general practice that draws extensively on the British model.

Advisers from the World Bank, the EU, and many bilateral donors agreed that the polyclinic had failed to deliver modern, integrated health care and saw general practices as the future.

The article suggested that the most likely reason for increased mortality among old people in England and Wales in 2015 was the application of austerity policies, saying that “the evidence points to a major failure of the health system, possibly exacerbated by failings in social care”.