New Year's honour for consultant diabetologist
Professor Jonathan Valabhji, a consultant diabetologist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and National Clinical Director for Diabetes and Obesity at NHS England, has been awarded an OBE in the New Year Honours List 2019 for services to diabetes and obesity care.
Professor Valabhji first joined St Mary’s Hospital as a junior doctor in 1994 and was appointed as a consultant in 2002. He has provided care to patients at the Trust in both his capacity as a specialist in diabetes and endocrinology and as a general physician.
In 2002 he established the acclaimed Multidisciplinary Diabetic Foot Service at the Trust which provides daily clinics focusing on foot infections including osteomyelitis and Charcot foot disease. The clinical outcomes for this service have been shown to be amongst the best globally.
As National Clinical Director, Professor Valabhji is Clinical Lead for the NHS England Diabetes Programme, including both the Diabetes Treatment and Care Programme and the Healthier You: NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme.
This collaboration between NHS England, Public Health England and Diabetes UK this year saw England become the first country in the world to achieve full national coverage with an evidence-based type 2 diabetes prevention programme.
Professor Valabhji said: “I am delighted to receive this award. It is an honour to work in the NHS, with fantastic teams both at the hospital and at NHS England. Together, we have made some ground breaking improvements in diabetes and obesity care.”
Imperial College Healthcare chief executive, Professor Tim Orchard, added: “I am delighted that Jonathan has been recognised in this way for his outstanding contribution to diabetes healthcare. As a leading clinician in his field, his ground-breaking work has helped to improve the lives of many people with diabetes, not just at St Mary’s, but across the whole country.
“We are extremely proud of his achievements and that another one of our clinicians has received this important honour.”
Jonathan is also Professor of Practice (Diabetes) at Imperial College London, with a current research focus on diabetic foot disease as well as on diabetes population level health.
