Rate My Professor Lucy Chappell

Professor Lucy Chappell is Chief Scientific Adviser to the Department of Health and Social Care and Chief Executive Officer of the National Institute for Health and Care Research. She holds the position of Professor of Obstetrics at King’s College London and serves as Honorary Consultant Obstetrician at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. Her research programme investigates the prediction and prevention of adverse pregnancy outcomes, particularly in women with pre-existing comorbidities such as chronic hypertension and chronic kidney disease, employing randomised controlled trials and observational studies. Chappell completed her medical education at St Thomas’s Hospital Medical School and the University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine, followed by a PhD focused on the prevention of pre-eclampsia. She also holds a Master’s degree in higher education from King’s College London and has subspecialty training in maternal-fetal medicine.

Chappell is a former NIHR Research Professor and NIHR Senior Investigator. She has served as President of the Blair Bell Research Society and as an academic editor for PLoS Medicine. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Her contributions include national pregnancy lead investigator roles in major trials and membership on boards such as the NIHR Health Technology Assessment Clinical Evaluation and Trials Board. Key publications include work on antioxidants and pre-eclampsia risk in The Lancet (1999), diagnostic accuracy of placental growth factor in Circulation (2013), and placental growth factor testing in a stepped-wedge cluster-randomised trial in The Lancet (2019). She was appointed to her current NIHR leadership roles in 2021.