John Townend, MSc, PhD

John joined OPRI as a senior statistician in 2022. Originally working in environmental sciences, he began work in health research in 2004 with a project studying maternal deaths in developing countries and helped to set up and run several field surveys. He subsequently provided statistical consultancy services to the National Health Service in the UK and was involved in a wide range of hospital based studies. He has also worked on major clinical trials including vaccine trials in the Gambia and industry sponsored international trials of breast cancer treatments. He has spent many years working on epidemiological and observational studies and using real-world data, including studies on community spread of pneumococcal bacteria and associations between socioeconomic status and health outcomes. He has presented statistical training courses in the UK and West Africa and is an author on over 70 publications in refereed journals.

John has worked on several studies at OPRI, including work on biomarkers in severe asthma and developing a cardiopulmonary risk model for patients with COPD.