Richard Smith

Dr. Richard Smith is director of the Ovations initiative to combat chronic disease in the developing world. The initiative is funding centres in China, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Tunisia, Tanzania, South Africa, Central America, and the US Mexico border.

A member of the board of the Public Library of Science, he is also an honorary professor at the University of Warwick, a member of the governing council of St George’s, University of London, and editor of Cases Journal, a new electronic journal that aims to publish tens of thousands of case reports a year. Previously he was chief executive of UnitedHealth Europe, a subsidiary of the UnitedHealth Group that works with public health systems in Europe.

Before that he was editor of the British Medical Journal and chief executive of the BMJ Publishing Group. Having qualified in medicine in Edinburgh, he worked in hospital in Scotland and New Zealand before joining the BMJ. He also worked for six years as a television doctor with the BBC and TV-AM and has a degree in management science from the Stanford Business School. He loves making soup, marmalade, and trouble.