Rate My Professor Jeremy Howick

Professor Jeremy Howick is Professor of Empathic Healthcare and founding Director of the Stoneygate Centre for Excellence in Empathic Healthcare at the University of Leicester's Leicester Medical School, a position he took up on 1 June 2022. In this capacity, he spearheads an ambitious initiative to embed empathy within medical curricula, equipping the NHS with compassionate, resilient junior doctors. His responsibilities encompass strategic leadership, outreach efforts, formation of an international advisory board, staff recruitment, and advancement of the research agenda, with the goal of establishing the centre as a premier global resource for evidence-based empathy training and scholarship. Howick, originally from Canada, pursued undergraduate studies at Dartmouth College in the US before obtaining graduate qualifications from the University of Oxford and a PhD in Philosophy of Medicine from the London School of Economics in 2008. His distinguished career trajectory includes longstanding affiliations with the University of Oxford since 2007, where he served as Levels of Evidence Lead at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, Dissertation Coordinator for the MSc in Evidence-Based Healthcare, Fellow of Kellogg College, and Impact Coordinator for the Research Excellence Framework within the Faculty of Philosophy. Between 2009 and 2011, he coordinated the Intercalated BSc in Philosophy and Medicine at University College London on a part-time basis. Currently, he maintains visiting professorships at the University of Buffalo, University of Bologna, and McGill University, alongside serving as principal investigator for a Medical Research Council grant at Cardiff University.

Howick's primary research interests centre on empathy in healthcare, encompassing its measurement, impacts, and educational interventions; placebo and nocebo effects; and the philosophical underpinnings of evidence-based medicine. Boasting over 150 peer-reviewed publications, an h-index of 35, and more than 8,500 citations, his scholarship exerts considerable influence. Major books include The Philosophy of Evidence-Based Medicine (2011, Wiley-Blackwell), the international bestseller Doctor You (2017, translated into seven languages), and Placebos, Nocebos (Johns Hopkins University Press). Prominent articles feature systematic reviews and meta-analyses on empathic communication effects in consultations (2018, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine), practitioner empathy assessments (2017, BMC Medical Education), and the TIDieR-placebo checklist for trial reporting. He has contributed to NIHR Health Technology Assessments and policy development. Accolades encompass the Gold Medal from the European Society for Person Centered Healthcare (2020), John Locke Award from the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries (2020), Departmental Award for Excellence from Oxford's Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences (2017), and several teaching prizes from Oxford and the LSE. Howick has mentored over 20 MSc students and multiple PhDs to completion, delivered more than 100 plenary and invited lectures, and amplified his impact through contributions to national media, BBC Horizon, and public engagement initiatives.