Professor Nicholas Harvey

Director; Professor of Rheumatology and Clinical Epidemiology, Honorary Consultant Rheumatologist, MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Centre, University of Southampton, UK

Prof Harvey trained at Oxford and Cambridge Medical Schools, and underwent basic medical training in Norwich, Cambridge, Newcastle upon Tyne and Stoke on Trent, before joining the Wessex rheumatology specialist training programme in 2001. Taking time out from clinical matters, he spent three years at the MRC LEC working towards a PhD, the main focus of which has been the 4 year follow up of a cohort of SWS babies, investigating the influence of early life factors on skeletal growth in childhood. After gaining his PhD Prof Harvey completed his last year of rheumatology training as a Walport Clinical Lecturer, returning to the MRC LEC as a Lecturer and Honorary Consultant Rheumatologist, before promotion to Senior Lecturer in 2011. He was appointed to a personal chair in 2015, and leads, with Professor Cooper and Professor Dennison, an MRC programme focused on the lifecourse epidemiology of bone and joint disease. He is working to 1) translate epidemiological observations linking early life influences on later bone health to potential novel public health strategies aimed at optimising childhood bone mineral accrual and reducing risk of later fracture; and 2) elucidate underlying mechanisms. The centrepiece of this strategy is the MAVIDOS Maternal Vitamin D Osteoporosis Study, one of the first ever human investigations of the early life origins hypothesis, and which aims to test, in a randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blind setting, whether babies born to women supplemented with vitamin D through pregnancy will have greater bone mass at birth, assessed by DXA, than babies born to unsupplemented mothers. He has won several Young Investigator Awards at national and international meetings, published over 100 peer-reviewed papers, and is a member of the National Osteoporosis Society (UK) Scientific Programme Committee, UK Biobank Imaging Working Group, International Osteoporosis Foundation Committee of Scientific Advisers, Bone Research Society (UK) Committee, Arthritis Research UK PRC. He serves as an associate editor for Frontiers in Bone Endocrinology and Archives of Public Health, and on the editorial board of Bone and Osteoporosis International.

University of Southampton Profile for Director; Professor Nicholas Harvey