Dr Edmondson-Jones trained as a doctor in Scotland, graduating from Dundee University in 1980. He then spent 20 years in the Army, working worldwide, supporting the Gurkha Rifles in the Falklands War of 1982 and commanding the British Medical Battalion with the United Nations in the Former Yugoslavia in 1993. He was awarded the MBE in the Gulf War Honours List in 1992. Dr Edmondson-Jones joined the NHS in 2000 and was appointed Director of Public Health in Portsmouth in 2001.

In recent years, Dr Edmondson-Jones has championed the development of various models of behaviour change locally and nationally. In particular, he has ensured the adoption of social marketing techniques, health trainers, health trainer champions, alcohol brief intervention team, addiction recovery brokers and many other initiatives locally. Portsmouth also piloted the concept and developed the public health model for a Healthy Living Pharmacy– this is now being rolled out nationally.