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Professor Sir Rory Collins

Head of Oxford Population Health, Professor Sir Rory Collins, will be honoured with a 2022 Ron Haddock International Impact Award at the American Heart Association (AHA)’s National Volunteer Awards in June. The award recognises his ground-breaking research into cardiovascular disease and stroke.

Named after a former chair of the AHA, the Ron Haddock International Impact Awards recognise volunteers for outstanding contributions to the Association’s international programmes. Professor Collins is being recognised for being at the forefront of ground-breaking discoveries that have revolutionised cardiovascular disease prevention and treatment, including demonstrating the effectiveness of lifesaving drugs such as streptokinase, aspirin, and statins. 

Professor Collins has been instrumental in the development and delivery of large, simple randomised clinical trials, including the International Studies of Infarct Survival (ISIS) which assessed the effects of widely usable treatments on survival following a heart attack. These trials paved the way for many other successful trials designed and delivered by the Clinical Trial Service Unit and Epidemiological Studies Unit. Working with Professor Sir Richard Peto, Professor Collins pioneered novel approaches to trial design, integrating the trials with clinical practice, simplifying the recruitment and data entry processes, and using government records for follow-up, to minimise the burden on clinicians and participants.

In 2005, Professor Collins became chief executive and principal investigator of UK Biobank, a large-scale biomedical database and research resource, which now contains in-depth genetic and health information from half a million participants who have agreed to have their health followed over time and their data made available to researchers around the world. More than 30,000 scientists are using UK Biobank’s data to inform research into the prevention and treatment of numerous health conditions.

Professor Collins said ‘I am delighted to have been awarded such a prestigious prize by the AHA, an organisation that inspired me, and so many others, to do the best research that I could. I was very fortunate to have superb mentors such as Richard Peto when I started my career and I hope that this award will provide inspiration to the researchers who will make the ground-breaking discoveries of the future.’

‘I am delighted that Rory has been named a 2022 recipient of the American Heart Association’s Ron Haddock International Impact Award,’ said Nancy Brown, CEO American Heart Association. 'His commitment to establishing large-scale epidemiological studies of the causes, prevention and treatment of heart attacks and other vascular diseases is saving countless lives every year around the world.’

Read more about Rory’s work on the AHA website.

Watch the virtual ceremony on Tuesday 28 June from 18:00 – 20:00 CT (0:00 – 2:00 BST on Wednesday 29 June).