Name Anthony Costello | Role Paediatrician | |
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Anthony costello use and misuse of evidence
Anthony Costello (born 20 February 1953) is a British paediatrician best known for his work on improving survival among mothers and their newborn infants in poor populations of developing countries. Until 2015 Costello was Professor of International Child Health and Director of the Institute for Global Health at University College London (UCL).
Contents
- Anthony costello use and misuse of evidence
- Ucl lunch hour lecture taster prof anthony costello
- Personal life
- International Work and Research
- Awards
- References
He was an attending paediatrician at University College Hospital, and the UCL Pro-Provost for Africa and the Middle East. As founder of an international charity, Women and Children First, he has helped to spread the results of his research work through mobilisation of women’s groups across Africa and south Asia. In September 2015 he joined the World Health Organisation in Geneva as Director of the Department of Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health.
Ucl lunch hour lecture taster prof anthony costello
Personal life
Anthony Costello was born in Beckenham, Kent, and graduated from St Joseph's Academy in Blackheath. He attended St Catharine’s College Cambridge where he took a degree in Experimental Psychology and qualified as a doctor in Medical Sciences after clinical training at the Middlesex Hospital in London. He then trained in Paediatrics and Neonatology at University College London. He and his wife, Helen, have two sons, Harry and Ned, and one daughter, Freya.
International Work and Research
After living in Baglung district in western Nepal from 1984–1986, two days walk from a road, he became fascinated by challenges to mother and child health in poor, remote populations. His areas of scientific expertise include the evaluation of cost-effective interventions to reduce maternal and newborn deaths, women’s groups, strategies to tackle malnutrition, international aid and the health effects of climate change. In 1999 he published a pioneering book on how to improve newborn infant health in developing countries.
With a Nepali organisation (MIRA), that he helped to establish, a large community trial of participatory learning and action using women’s groups in the remote mountains of Makwanpur district, Nepal was published in The Lancet in 2004. He went on to establish partnerships and further studies with local organisations in eastern India, Mumbai, Bangladesh and Malawi. Seven cluster randomised controlled trials of women’s groups in Nepal, India, Bangladesh and Malawi, led to a meta-analysis published in the Lancet in May 2013.
Results showed that in populations where more than 30% of pregnant women joined the women's group programme, maternal death and newborn deaths were cut by one third. The intervention has now been recommended by the World Health Organisation for scale-up in poor, rural populations.
Costello chaired the 2009 Lancet Commission on Managing the Health Effects of Climate Change, and was co-chair of a new Lancet Commission which links the UK, China, Norway and Sweden on emergency actions to tackle the climate health crisis, published in June 2015.
At WHO he has helped to lead the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health (2016‒2030) with its three objectives of survive, thrive and transform – to end preventable mortality, to promote health and well-being, and to expand enabling environments. Its guiding principles include equity, universality, human rights, development effectiveness and sustainability.
With the WHO team he has also launched the global accelerated action for the health of adolescents (AA-HA!) and established an expert review group called Maternal and Newborn Information for tracking Outcomes and Results (MONITOR) to harmonize maternal and newborn health indicators.
In February 2017, together with UNICEF and UNFPA he helped to launched the Network for Improving Quality of Care for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health to introduce evidence-based interventions to improve quality of care for maternal and newborn health supported by a learning system. The Network involves Ethiopia, Nigeria, India, Bangladesh, Malawi, Cote d'Ivoire, Uganda, Tanzania and Ghana. He also leads work on community empowerment for family health - what it means, how to measure it, and how to plan interventions at district level.
With the Lancet he is a co-chair of their new Countdown Commission on Climate Change which reports progress annually on climate change adaptation, mitigation, economics, energy policy and public engagement. With UNICEF he is helping WHO to coordinate a new Lancet Commission on redesigning child health for the Sustainable Development Goals era.
Awards
Costello holds fellowships of the Academy of Medical Sciences and of the Royal College of Physicians. In April 2011, Costello received the James Spence Medal, the highest honour of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health where he is a fellow. He serves on the Board of the global Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health, chaired by Dr Graca Machel. In May 2016 he received the BMJ Lifetime Achievement Award.