Prevention of asthma deaths in childhood

Professor Andrew Bush is Professor of Paediatrics and Director, Centre for Paediatrics and Child Health, Imperial College, Professor of Paediatric Respirology, National Heart and Lung Institute Consultant Paediatric Chest Physician, Royal Brompton Hospital.

His research interests include the invasive and non-invasive measurement of airway inflammation in children, in particular the use of endobronchial biopsy in the management of severe asthma, and also respiratory mass spectrometry.

He has supervised 47 MD and PhD degrees, authored nearly 650 papers in peer review journals, and written more than 100 book chapters. He co-edited the 9th Edition of Kendig's Disorders of the Respiratory Tract in Children, and is currently editing the next edition.

He was Deputy Editor of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine (at that time the only Deputy Editor from outside North America), and Head of the Paediatric Assembly of the European Respiratory Society. He was the Joint Editor in Chief of Thorax, the first paediatrician to hold this post. Currently he is Guideline Director of the European Respiratory Society, having previously served as Chair of the Publications Committee. He is an emeritus NIHR Senior Investigator, and Chief Investigator in a £4.64 million Wellcome Strategic Award.

Most importantly, he is Grandpa to the six greatest grandchildren in the world, Dylan and Jack (both in South Africa, where a colleague unkindly but accurately described him as Professor of Wine, Cricket and Grandchildren at the UCT), and Oscar, and the twins Aya and Fletcher, and Lydia, all in the UK.

Dr Mark L Levy currently works as a sessional General Practitioner in London. He was first chairman of the GPIAG (now called the PCRS-UK) and editor in Chief of the Primary Care Respiratory Journal (now PCRM). He was the Clinical Lead for the UK National Review of Asthma Deaths (NRAD) (2011-2014) and is a member of the Dissemination and Implementation Committee and a member of the Board of Directors of the Global Initiative on Asthma (GINA).

His current work includes research and implementation of research findings related to lessons learnt from asthma deaths and preventable asthma attacks. He is also working as asthma lead (and joint asthma-COPD Lead) for the Whole Systems Integrated Care database and Radar system (WSIC) in North West London. He is currently chair of the Data and Digital asthma workstream on behalf of the Children and Young People’s (CYP) Transformation Programme of NHSE.

He has authored over 160 papers, abstracts, and book chapters on the topic of asthma. He has a special interest in respiratory diseases, particularly asthma and more specifically acute asthma and asthma deaths.

Ms Ann McMurray is an Asthma Nurse Specialist at the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People in Edinburgh. Ann qualified originally as a general nurse in 1993 and then as a children's nurse in 1995. She has worked as an asthma nurse specialist for the last 19 years. More recently Ann has been on secondment as a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh/ AUKCAR working on a study entitled Parent and Patient perspective of fatal and near fatal asthma - a qualitative study.

Ann is a member of the faculty for the Scottish Allergy and Respiratory Academy (SARA) and regularly contributes to other training events in Scotland. She is actively involved with the Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research (AUKCAR) as a collaborator and is interested in Patient Public Involvement (PPI) especially working with the young people's group, @speakasthma.

Ann has written for publication and is also a peer reviewer for medical and nursing journals. Ann is the current chair of the National Paediatric Respiratory and Allergy Nurses Group.