Professor Richard Hobbs, the NIHR Oxford BRC’s Theme Lead for Multimorbidity and Long-term Conditions, has been appointed a CBE in the 2019 New Year’s Honours for his services to medical research.
Prof Hobbs, a practising inner-city GP for over 38 years, is Head of the University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences and Director of the NIHR’s School for Primary Care Research, and of the NIHR CLAHRC Oxford.
As well as his CBE, Prof Hobbs has also received the 2018 RCGP Discovery Prize, which is awarded every three years for outstanding research in general practice that has helped transform healthcare and the well-being of patients. The RCGP selected him for his “epoch-making contributions to cardio-vascular research and the development of academic general practice.”
Professor Hobbs’s research interests focus on cardiovascular epidemiology and clinical trials, especially relating to vascular and stroke risk, and heart failure. His research has impacted on international health policies and clinical guidelines, with over 350 original papers in peer reviewed journals, 28 book chapters and 13 edited books. He is also the president of the European Primary Care Cardiovascular Society.
Within the Oxford BRC, Professor Hobbs leads the Theme dedicated to the better understanding and management of multimorbidity and long-term conditions.
About his work, Prof Hobbs said: “The successes of societal change, healthcare, and disease prevention in improving the overall health of the population has a perverse consequence, that if our living longer lives with much higher proportions of the elderly and very elderly in the population, this inevitably means that there are more people living with long-term illness – and frequently multiple illnesses – and this is a major challenge to society: how can we enable longer, but healthier lives?
“We research in the BRC how better prevention, earlier detection and more focused management on the complex inter-relations between multi-morbid conditions might improve patient quality of life as well as benefit society through lower health and social care utilisation.”