FPH announces the winner of the Bazalgette Professorship Champion of Evidence Award

FPH is delighted to announce Ian Roberts, Professor of Epidemiology & Public Health and co-director of the Clinical Trials Unit at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) as the winner of the 2019 Award.

Professor Roberts has been awarded the Bazalgette professorship for translating his research on tranexamic acid (TXA) in the management of acute severe bleeding into practice by health services, emergency responders, the military and maternity services, benefiting populations in the UK and globally.

Professor Roberts was the Chief Investigator on two TXA trials at the LSHTM. The CRASH-2 trial was conducted on 20,000 patients with acute traumatic bleeding and the WOMAN trial involved 20,000 women with post-partum haemorrhages.

On the basis of the results of the CRASH-2 trial, he successfully applied to include TXA on the World Health Organization List of Essential Medicines. As a result, TXA use has rapidly increased within the NHS and globally, potentially saving many thousands of lives. Immediately after the results of CRASH-2 were published, the British Army began using TXA to save lives on the battlefield.

Professor Roberts is the first person to receive the FPH Bazalgette Professorship Champion of Evidence Award. The Award, presented in collaboration with the Alliance for Useful Evidence, recognises a Fellow of FPH for major contributions to public health policy and/or practice through research translation for the benefit of UK population health.

Prof John Middleton, president of FPH, said: “Professor Roberts’ work on tranexamic acid has saved hundreds of thousands of lives where traumatic bleeding would otherwise have been fatal. His work is a stellar example of a well-constructed trial leading to a clear result and a need to turn that result into action. Ian has achieved that globally, nationally, in health services, military services, and in maternity care. We strongly commend Professor Roberts’ example of translating research into life-saving practice and look forward to the Bazalgette Lecture he will give in May.”

Ian Roberts, professor of epidemiology and public health, and co-director of the Clinical Trials Unit at LSHTM, said: “I am really delighted to have won FPH's inaugural Bazalgette Professorship Champion of Evidence Award. I have long admired Bazalgette’s contribution to public health and often talk to the students about him and so to be selected for this award is a real honour.”

Jonathan Shepherd, professor of oral and maxillofacial surgery at Cardiff University, was on the judging panel for this year’s Bazalgette Professorship Champion of Evidence Award. He said: “Academics in medicine – professors of surgery and primary care for example – combine practice and research to the benefit of us all. But in public health, these combined roles are very rare. Communities of public health academics and practitioners are distinctly different. This separation is a barrier to the translation of research into practice and to ensuring that research is driven by questions arising in public health practice. The new Bazalgette Professorships, named for Sir Joseph Bazalgette whose life preserving sewers transformed public health in the 19th Century, are designed to break down this barrier by celebrating and incentivising the implementation of research findings into public health practice.”

Professor Ian Roberts will be present the inaugural Bazalgette Lecture on 14 May. To find out more and to reserve a place, click here.