Areas of expertise

Professor Bush is an expert in all aspects of respiratory disease in children and has given presentations to more than 500 academic meetings throughout the world.

His research interests are in paediatric respiratory medicine, especially invasive and non-invasive assessment of airway inflammation in asthma and cystic fibrosis and clinical respiratory physiology.

As well as advising a number of international clinical care groups on different aspects of respiratory disease in children, Professor Bush has served the European Respiratory Society as head of the Paediatric Assembly, Chair of the Publications committee and Guidelines Director. He has also been a member of the Medical Research Council College of Experts and served on the Research Committee of the British Lung Foundation and the Cystic Fibrosis Research Trust. 

Professor Bush is currently emeritus National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) senior investigator. This position is given to only a select number of clinical academics nationwide and recognises the valued contribution he has made, and continues to make, to the paediatric respiratory research agenda. 

He has been a visiting professor at Melbourne Children's Hospital, at Wake Forest, North Carolina and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where he delivered the annual George Polgar Lecture. He was the 2007 Charles West Lecturer at the Royal College of Physicians. 

His other visiting professorships have included:

• Miami Children's Hospital
• Virginia Commonwealth University
• Nancy N Huang Professor at St Christopher's Hospital, Philadelphia
• Ludwig Engel Professor, Sydney
• Honorary Professor, University of Cape Town
• Awarded a Doctorate Honoris Causa, and made Honorary Professor, University of Vilnius, Lithuania
• Title of Professor Honoris Causa, conferred by the Federal University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre, 2022
• Arricale Family Professor in Pediatric Interstitial Lung Disease, Johns Hopkins Hospital, USA, 2023
• Wong Bock Boon Visiting Professor to the department of Paediatrics, National University Hospital, Singapore, 2024

Teaching

Professor Bush has taught for the European School of Respiratory Medicine and is a recognised trainer for the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. He has also been a tutor in paediatrics at the Royal College of Physicians and a recognised teacher in paediatric respiratory medicine at the University of London. 

He set up the paediatric HERMES task force when he was head of the paediatric assembly of the European Respiratory Society, which has resulted in the Europe-wide syllabus in the field, numerous publications including a Handbook (to which he contributed 4 chapters) and an exit examination. 

In 2011 he was awarded the Imperial College Rector’s medal for Excellence in Research Supervision. He has co-supervised more than 50 MD, MD(Res) and PhD theses, and more than 100 of his trainees have been appointed to senior posts (more than two thirds in teaching hospitals or tertiary referral centres).

Awards and funding

Professor Bush has received many awards and accolades for his work in paediatric respiratory medicine. 

• 2008: Jonxis Medallist, University Hospital of Groningen, Netherlands.
• 2010: President’s Award, Congress International de Pneumologie Pediatrique for distinguished achievement in paediatric respiratory science and the global care of children with pulmonary diseases.
• 2013: Otto Wolff Medal, Royal Society of Medicine, for an outstanding paediatrician with an international reputation.
• 2014: Lifetime Achievement Award, European Respiratory Society’s (ERS) Paediatric Assembly, presented at the 24th International Congress of the ERS in Munich, Germany.
• 2014: Honorary Lifetime Fellowship, South African Thoracic Society, given in recognition of his contribution to respiratory medicine in South Africa.
• 2015: Past President’s award, International Congress on Paediatric Pulmonology (CIPP) in Krakow, Poland.
• 2020: European Respiratory Society (ERS) Congress Chair Award for outstanding contribution to research and training in respiratory medicine.

With collaborators, Professor Bush has raised more than £90 million for research in his specialist areas via peer review grants and donations, including a £4.64 million Wellcome Strategic Award. He is a Principal Investigator in the MRC Asthma UK Centre for the study of mechanisms in allergic asthma, the Asthma-Lung UK Centre for Applied Asthma Research and the ERS Clinical Research Collaboration in Paediatric Bronchiectasis, Child-BEAR-net.  

Publications

Professor Bush ishas served as joint editor of Thorax, one of the top respiratory medicine journals in the world, and he was the first paediatrician to hold this post. He is now in his second term as deputy editor of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

He sits on the editorial board or is associate editor for a number of other prestigious medical journals including the Journal of Pediatrics and Neonatology, Update in Respiratory Technology and Applied Technology, Chest, the Jornal de Pediatria and The Open Pediatric Medicine Journal.

As well as having nearly 800 papers published in peer review journals, Professor Bush has co-edited a number of books including: Growing up with Lung Disease: the Lung in Transition to Adult Life (Monograph); Disorders of the Respiratory Tract in Children (Elsevier, 7th and 10th editions) and Hodson and Geddes Cystic Fibrosis (Hodder Arnold, 3rd and 5th editions).