Professor Sir Andrew Pollard Awarded Highest Honour in Paediatrics

Professor Sir Andrew Pollard was awarded the highest honour in Paediatrics – the James Spence Medal for 2022. 

Awarded for outstanding contributions to the advancement of knowledge and understanding in paediatrics and child health, the James Spence medal is presented to persons working in the UK or in any country of the British Commonwealth within the field of clinical or social paediatrics, public health, clinical science, epidemiology or family practice. 

The award is made on the recommendation of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) Council on the advice of the Nominations Committee and presented at the RCPCH Conference along with a volume of the collected writings of Sir James Spence. 

Professor Sir Andrew Pollard works with Paediatric Infection and Immunity at the University of Oxford, is an Honorary Consultant Paediatrician at Oxford Children’s Hospital and is a former Vice Master and current Fellow of St Cross College. 

He is well known in his field as an authority on the design, development and testing of vaccines for adults and children, and his capacity as Director of the Oxford Vaccine Group over the past eighteen months has catapulted him to wider recognition as a public figure in the fight against COVID-19.  

The development of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine has had an immeasurable impact on the lives of children and young people across the world. His wider work has also had a profound impact on childhood immunisation in the UK, supporting the introduction of half of the vaccines currently given to children.   

In 2020 he received the Oxford University Vice Chancellor’s Innovation Award in for his work on typhoid vaccines and in 2021 was knighted in the for services to public health, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Please visit the RCPCH’s website to read the (very) long list of Professor Sir Andrew’s accomplishments. 

Congratulations Professor Sir Andrew on this prestigious award!