Deborah Lawlor

Last updated
Deborah Lawlor
Born
Bradford
NationalityBritish
Known for Life course epidemiology, Reproductive health, Perinatal health, Cardio-metabolic health
Scientific career
Fields Epidemiology
Institutions University of Bristol
Thesis The epidemiology of coronary heart disease in women: the role of insulin resistance (2003)

Deborah A. Lawlor is a British epidemiologist and professor at the University of Bristol, where she is the deputy director of the Medical Research Council Integrative Epidemiology Unit. She is also a fellow of the Faculty of Public Health and of the Academy of Medical Sciences. Her main areas of research are perinatal, reproductive and cardio-metabolic health. Lawlor was awarded a CBE in the 2017 Queen's Birthday Honours for her services to social and community medicine research.

Contents

Early life and education

Lawlor was born in Bradford in a house that was later demolished when the University of Bradford was built on the site. [1] She went to St Edmund Campion comprehensive school, then studied for A-levels at St. Joseph's Catholic College. [1]

Lawlor first trained as a medical doctor and received her MBChB from the University of Bristol in 1986. After practising medicine for several years (in the UK and abroad in Mozambique, [2] ) she became increasingly interested in medical research. Her main interests were understanding large scale determinants of health such as the effect of socio-economic inequalities, and she returned to university to study public health. She received a Masters in Public Health from the University of Leeds in 1997, and a MSc in medical statistics from the University of London in 2003. In 2003, she received a PhD in epidemiology from the University of Bristol for a thesis titled "The epidemiology of coronary heart disease in women: the role of insulin resistance".

Career and research

After her PhD, Lawlor joined the Department of Social Medicine at the University of Bristol on a postdoctoral fellowship funded by the Medical Research Council. There she progressed to Professor of Epidemiology. Lawlor is also the Deputy Director of the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit as well as holding visiting or honorary positions with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the University of Bradford, King's College London, the University of Adelaide and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Lawlor's research has focused on reproductive health with a particular focus on the long-term effects of pregnancy on both mother and child outcomes. [3] In particular, her work has focused on the effects of cardio-metabolic diseases including diabetes and cardiovascular disease. She has set up a Reproductive Health theme at the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) which she leads. [3] Her programme has one strand aiming to improve in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) success by developing an evidence base to accurately predict success and identify causes of failure. Her work has led to the development of a tool for predicting IVF outcomes in couples trying to conceive. [4] [5] Lawlor's theme also explores adverse perinatal, pregnancy and offspring cardio-metabolic outcomes, to enable stratified and effective antenatal care in both IVF and spontaneous conceptions.

Lawlor is also very interested in causal inference techniques in order to better inform interventions. She has published many papers outlining and using the technique of Mendelian randomisation [6] and is an advocate for the combining of multiple methods to allow for the strongest possible causal inference. [7]

Deborah has also published a 'negative CV' including paper and grant rejections. This includes the advice she was given at school to take less demanding Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) examinations rather than the more demanding 'O' Level examinations, and that she should not consider university and needed to be more 'reasonable' with her expectations.[ citation needed ]

In 2021, Lawlor became the British Heart Foundation Professor of Cardiovascular Science and Clinical Epidemiology. [8]

Recognition

In 2003, Lawlor was presented with a UK Department of Health Career Scientist Award. Lawlor was elected a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health by distinction (2006) and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2012). [9] Additionally, Lawlor was named by Thomson Reuters in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 as in the top 1% of scientists who are "the world's most influential scientific minds in her field. [10] In 2017, Lawlor was awarded a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Queen's Birthday Honours for her services to social and community medicine research. [11] [12]

Related Research Articles

Archibald Leman Cochrane was a Scottish physician noted for his book, Effectiveness and Efficiency: Random Reflections on Health Services, which advocated the use of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to improve clinical trials and medical interventions. His advocacy of RCTs eventually led to the creation of the Cochrane Library database of systematic reviews, the UK Cochrane Centre in Oxford and Cochrane, an international organization of review groups that are based at research institutions worldwide. He is known as one of the fathers of modern clinical epidemiology and is considered to be the originator of the idea of evidence-based medicine. The Archie Cochrane Archive is held at the Archie Cochrane Library at University Hospital Llandough, Penarth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Medical Research Council (United Kingdom)</span> National medical research agency

The Medical Research Council (MRC) is responsible for co-coordinating and funding medical research in the United Kingdom. It is part of United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI), which came into operation 1 April 2018, and brings together the UK's seven research councils, Innovate UK and Research England. UK Research and Innovation is answerable to, although politically independent from, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Austin Bradford Hill</span> English epidemiologist and statistician (1897–1991)

Sir Austin Bradford Hill was an English epidemiologist who pioneered the modern randomised clinical trial and, together with Richard Doll, demonstrated the connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. Hill is widely known for pioneering the "Bradford Hill" criteria for determining a causal association.

Janet Howard Darbyshire is a British epidemiologist and science administrator.

Sylvia Therese Richardson is a French/British Bayesian statistician and is currently Professor of Biostatistics and Director of the MRC Biostatistics Unit at the University of Cambridge. In 2021 she became the president of the Royal Statistical Society for the 2021–22 year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wendy Ewart</span> British scientist

Wendy Ewart is a British scientist who worked for the Medical Research Council (MRC) from 2008 to 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Florence Pat Haseltine</span> American scientist, novelist, and activist (born 1942)

Florence Pat Haseltine is a U.S. physician, biophysicist, reproductive endocrinologist, journal editor, novelist, inventor, and advocate for women's health. She has been diagnosed with dyslexia. She built a diverse career in medicine. An associate professor at Yale University, her work specializes in obstetrics and gynecology as well as women's rights and gender bias in medicine. While at Yale, Haseltine established the embryology laboratory, which was one of the early labs to have a successful IVF baby. The Microscope used in the laboratory is now in Historical Collections of the National Museum of Health and Medicine.

David James Purslove Barker was an English physician and epidemiologist and originator of the Barker Hypothesis that foetal and early infant conditions have a permanent conditioning effect on the body's metabolism and chronic conditions later in life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sally Macintyre</span> British sociologist

Dame Sarah Jane Macintyre, known as Sally Macintyre, is a British medical sociologist. She is a professor emerita at the University of Glasgow.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Cleaveland</span> British veterinary surgeon and epidemiologist

Sarah Cleaveland is a veterinary surgeon and Professor of Comparative Epidemiology at the University of Glasgow.

Thomas Wilson Meade was a British epidemiologist. He was a pioneer in epidemiology—in particular, in the role blood clotting factors have in cardiovascular disease.

Ann Prentice, is a British nutritionist.

Sharon Jayne Peacock is a British microbiologist who is Professor of Public Health and Microbiology in the Department of Medicine at the University of Cambridge, and Master of Churchill College, Cambridge.

Nita Gandhi Forouhi is a British physician and academic, specialising in nutrition and epidemiology. She is Professor of Population Health and Nutrition at the University of Cambridge, the programme leader of the nutritional epidemiology programme of its MRC Epidemiology Unit, and an honorary consultant public health physician with Public Health England.

Kate Tilling is a British statistician who specialises in developing and applying statistical methods to overcome problems encountered in epidemiological research. Tilling has been a professor in medical statistics. in population health sciences within Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol, since 2011. She joined the University of Bristol in 2002 as a Senior Lecturer, following nine years as a lecturer at King's College London.

Eleanor Mary Riley was Director of the Roslin Institute, Dean of Research at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, and professor of Immunology at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focusses on understanding the immune response of the host to malaria and other diseases using human data and mouse models.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tamsin Ford</span> British psychiatrist

Tamsin Jane Ford is a British psychiatrist specialising in children's mental health. Since 2019 she has been based at the University of Cambridge where she is now Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Head of the Department of Psychiatry and Fellow of Hughes Hall. She has been heavily involved with the Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management (TCM) programme, created by Carolyn Webster-Stratton, which aims to raise and improve children's mental health in primary schools across Devon. Her work also ties in with the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), created by UK psychiatrist, Robert Goodman.

Rosalind Raine is a British applied health research scientist, public medicine doctor, professor of health care evaluation and the founding head of the Department of Applied Health Research at University College London (UCL).

Azra Catherine Hilary Ghani is a British epidemiologist who is a professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College London. Her research considers the mathematical modelling of infectious diseases, including malaria, bovine spongiform encephalopathy and coronavirus. She has worked with the World Health Organization on their technical strategy for malaria. She is associate director of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis.

Linda Sharples is a British statistician who is Professor of Medical Statistics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Her research considers statistical analysis of medical interventions. She has provided expert advice to clinical trials on cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer.

References

  1. 1 2 "CBE for child health expert". Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. 12 February 2017.
  2. ↑ Professor Debbie Lawlor, University of Bristol | Society for Social Medicine & Population Health. (n.d.). Retrieved 5 March 2019, from https://socsocmed.org.uk/members-and-networking/ecrs/meet-the-expert-dr-james-thomas-institute-of-education/professor-debbie-lawlor-department-of-social-medicine/ Archived 2019-03-07 at the Wayback Machine
  3. 1 2 “About Professor Debbie Lawlor” University of Bristol, retrieved 01.03.2019.
  4. ↑ "Online IVF calculator will predict chances of fertility treatment success". the Guardian. 2011-01-05. Retrieved 2022-12-09.
  5. ↑ (N.d.). Retrieved 5 March 2019, from http://www.ivfpredict.com/
  6. ↑ Lawlor, D. A., Harbord, R. M., Sterne, J. A., Timpson, N., & Davey Smith, G. (2008). Mendelian randomization: using genes as instruments for making causal inferences in epidemiology. Statistics in Medicine , 27(8), 1133–1163.
  7. ↑ Lawlor, D. A., Tilling, K., & Davey Smith, G. (2016). Triangulation in aetiological epidemiology. International Journal of Epidemiology , 45(6), 1866–1886.
  8. ↑ "Deborah Lawlor". The BHF. Retrieved 2023-10-26.
  9. ↑ Professor Deborah Lawlor | The Academy of Medical Sciences. (n.d.). Retrieved 5 March 2019, from https://acmedsci.ac.uk/fellows/fellows-directory/ordinary-fellows/professor-deborah-lawlor Archived 2019-03-06 at the Wayback Machine
  10. ↑ 2015: World’s Leading Scientific Minds 2015 | MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit | University of Bristol. (n.d.). Retrieved 5 March 2019, from https://www.bristol.ac.uk/integrative-epidemiology/news/2015/worlds-leading-scientific-minds-2015.html
  11. ↑ Bristol, U. of. (n.d.-a). 2017: Debbie CBE | MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit | University of Bristol. Retrieved 5 March 2019, from http://www.bris.ac.uk/integrative-epidemiology/news/2017/debbie-cbe.html
  12. ↑ Bristol, U. of. (n.d.-b). June: Queen’s birthday honour | News | University of Bristol. Retrieved 5 March 2019, from http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2017/june/debbie-lawlor-honour.html
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.