OV’s Lifetime Achievement Award

A resounding cheer of congratulations for OV Prof Anthony Culyer CBE (Cl 57-61) who has been recognised by his peers with a lifetime achievement award.

Tony has been awarded The Brian Abel-Smith Lifetime Achievement Award 2026 by LSE Health*. Brian Abel-Smith was a pioneer of comparative social policy whose work shaped health systems across Europe and beyond. This award recognises exceptional contributions to health policy and social welfare, combining scholarly impact with tangible improvements to population health.

Explaining why Tony was a recipient of this prestigious award, LSE Health noted, “Over 50 years, Tony Culyer transformed health economics, shifting the field from traditional welfarism toward extra-welfarism. He co-founded the Journal of Health Economics, wrote the influential ‘Culyer Report’ (1994) paving the way for the National Institute for Health and Care Research, and served as founding Vice Chair of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. In Canada, he served as Ontario’s first Chief Scientist at the Institute for Work and Health. His work shaped health priority-setting in the UK and internationally.”

Tony is currently a professor emeritus in the University of York’s Economics Department. He is also a senior research fellow at the Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation in the University of Toronto (Canada) and a visiting professor at Imperial College London.

Tony added, “The trouble with lifetime achievement awards is that they seem to imply that one’s achievements have been completed, though one’s life has not! As a matter of fact, this is the second such award I’ve had. The earlier one was in 2015 from the US-based International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research. Maybe awards get as stretched as lives! I rather hope so.

“I have retired but not retreated and shall soldier on through writing stuff, corresponding with friends and colleagues, and arguing the toss with my four grandchildren. I have vowed not to be old until I am at least 90 and have a step in my spring.”