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Blake Thomson

Blake Thomson

Blake Thomson

BA, MPhil, DPhil


DPhil Student (previous)

Blake joined the Clinical Trial Service Unit & Epidemiological Studies Unit (CTSU) and Balliol College in October 2016 to study for a DPhil in Population Health. His research is focused on establishing the effects of lifestyle risk factors like smoking and drinking on mortality in two prospective cohort studies: the Mexico City Prospective Study (MCPS), a blood-based cohort study of 150,000 adults, and the Cuba Prospective Study (CPS) of 140,000 adults. Blake is supervised by Prof Jonathan Emberson, Prof Sarah Lewington, Dr Ben Lacey, and Prof Sir Richard Peto.

Originally from Phoenix, Arizona, Blake received a BA in Global Health from Arizona State University, where he was a Flinn Scholar. He then spent two years as a Post-Bachelor Fellow at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. While there, he worked on the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study and also conducted community-based needs assessments in India, China, South Africa and the United States for the HealthRise and HeartRescue projects.

Following his time at IHME, Blake received an MPhil in Epidemiology from the University of Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge Scholar. His research at Oxford is supported by a Nuffield Department of Population Health Scholarship. Blake’s work experience and research interests are primarily in the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases in low- and middle-income countries. He is fluent in Spanish.

Key publications

Recent publications

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