Professor Prabhat Jha has started in the role of Head of Department, taking over from Professor Sir Rory Collins who was Head of Department from its inception in 2013.
Professor Jha studied Medicine at the University of Manitoba and was awarded a DPhil in Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Oxford (as a Rhodes Scholar), where he was supervised by the late Professor Dame Valerie Beral.
Most recently, he was the University Professor of Global Health and Epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, and Director of the Centre for Global Health Research, Unity Health Toronto. He has served on a number of advisory boards and has been a health adviser to several governments.
Professor Jha said ‘It is a privilege to take over the leadership of Oxford Population Health from Rory Collins who has so deftly combined a focus on world-leading science with a commitment to doing the best for staff and students. Our department is lauded worldwide for its excellence in clinical trials and population-based epidemiology and as an innovator in methods for both. I am looking forward to building on this foundation with colleagues in the department, in other areas of the University, and around the world.’
Professor Jha’s research focuses on nationwide epidemiological studies of the major causes of death in developing countries (including tobacco, alcohol, and cardiometabolic risk factors), and epidemiological research methods in low-resource settings, including randomised intervention studies. He is particularly interested in the use of routine mortality data for analytic epidemiology, and tobacco control policy in developed and developing countries. His research enabled a worldwide treaty on tobacco control signed now by 180 countries. He has quantified malaria mortality in children and adults in various settings, leading to vaccine trials.
Professor Jha was appointed Officer of the Order of Canada in 2012 for his contributions to epidemiology and the economics of global health. He has received a number of other awards, including the 2022 Award of Excellence from the American Public Health Association and the 2012 American Cancer Society’s Luther L Terry Award for Outstanding Research Contribution for his globally influential research on tobacco control. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the US National Academy of Medicine.
Professor Jha will be supported by three Deputy Heads of Department, Angela Brueggemann, Richard Haynes and Sarah Lewington, who will provide strategic leadership and support across the department and in specific areas of research and teaching. He will hold a professorial fellowship at St John’s College.
Professor Gavin Screaton, Head of the Medical Sciences Division, University of Oxford, added ‘On behalf of the Medical Sciences Division, I am pleased to welcome Prabhat back to the University and wish him every success in his new post. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Rory Collins for the huge contribution he has made as Head of Department.’