Pollyanna Hardy
BSc, MSc
Clinical Trialist and Director of National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit Clinical Trials Unit (NPEU CTU)
Pollyanna Hardy is responsible for the management and strategic direction of the NPEU CTU, and overseeing a programme of neonatal and maternal clinical trials.
Polly graduated from the University of Sussex in 1990 with a BSc in Mathematics and European Studies, and obtained an MSc in Statistics from University of Sheffield in 1994. She has previously worked as a medical statistician at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia. Polly joined the NPEU CTU as a Senior Statistician in 2010. In 2017 she then took up a post as a Statistics Lead at the Birmingham Clinical Trials Unit, University of Birmingham, where she spent four years working on a diverse portfolio of Randomised Controlled Trials (RCT), including perinatology, global surgery, mental health and health services delivery. She then returned to the NPEU in 2021 as Director of the CTU.
Polly has extensive experience in the design, conduct, analysis and reporting of RCTs, with a keen interest in complex RCT design methodology, and has particular expertise in RCTs in the field of obstetrics and neonatology. She is the statistics lead for the National Institute for Health Research Global Health Research Unit on Global Surgery RCT portfolio, and a member of a national Steering Group to develop a set of principles for handling end of follow-up events in clinical trials research (PeRSEVERE). She also currently sits on the NIHR Health Technology Assessment Commissioning Board.
Recent publications
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Trial of Selective Early Treatment of Patent Ductus Arteriosus with Ibuprofen.
Journal article
Gupta S. et al, (2024), N Engl J Med, 390, 314 - 325
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Mixed-methods feasibility study to inform a randomised controlled trial of proton pump inhibitors to reduce strictures following neonatal surgery for oesophageal atresia.
Journal article
Mitchell TK. et al, (2023), BMJ Open, 13
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A national priority setting partnership using Delphi consensus process to develop neonatal research questions suitable for practice-changing randomised trials in the United Kingdom
Journal article
Evans K. et al, (2023), Archives of Disease in Childhood
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Adaptation of the Wound Healing Questionnaire universal-reporter outcome measure for use in global surgery trials (TALON-1 study): mixed-methods study and Rasch analysis
Journal article
Glasbey J. and NIHR Global Health Research Unit on Global Surgery None., (2023), British Journal of Surgery
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The effectiveness of a primary care based collaborative care model to improve quality of life in people with severe mental illness: the PARTNERS2 cluster randomised controlled trial
Journal article
Byng R. et al, (2023), BJPsych