The SDG Impact of COVID-19: The view of Dr Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet

Elsevier, 8th April 2020

In this segment, RELX’s Global Head of Corporate Responsibility, Dr Márcia Balisciano, talks to Dr Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet

Richard Horton qualified in physiology and medicine with honours from the University of Birmingham in 1986. He joined The Lancet in 1990, moving to New York as North American Editor in 1993. In 2016, he chaired the Expert Group for the High Level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth, convened by Presidents Hollande of France and Zuma of South Africa. 

From 2011 to 2015, he was co-chair of the UN's independent Expert Review Group on Information and Accountability for Women's and Children's Health. In 2011, he was elected a Foreign Associate of the US Institute of Medicine and, in 2015, he received the Friendship Award from the Government of China. 

In 2019, he was awarded the WHO Director-General’s Health Leaders Award for outstanding leadership in global health and the Roux Prize in recognition of innovation in the application of global health evidence.  He wrote Health Wars (2003) about contemporary issues in medicine and health.  

He has a strong interest in global health and medicine’s contribution to our wider culture. He now works to develop the idea of planetary health – the health of human civilizations and the ecosystems on which they depend.