Areas of expertise
Professor Bush is an expert in all aspects of respiratory disease in children and has given over 500 presentations to 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 as head of the Paediatric Assembly of the European Respiratory Society. 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 enjoying a second term as a National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) senior investigator. This position is given to only a select number of clinical academics n ionwide, 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.
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 29 MD, MD(Res) and PhD theses, and more than 50 of his trainees have been appointed to senior posts (more than two thirds in teaching hospitals or tertiary referral centres).
On 1 April 2013, Professor Andrew Bush was appointed director of paediatrics at the National Heart and Lung Institute.
Awards and funding
Throughout his career, 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, Congres International de Pneumologie Pediatrique for distinguished achievement in paediatric respiratory science and the global care of children with pulmonary diseases.
- 2012 - Professor Bush was made an honorary professor at the University of Cape Town
- 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 £60 million for research in his specialist areas via peer review grants and donations. He is a Principal Investigator on in the MRC Asthma UK Centre for the study of mechanisms in allergic asthma, the FP-7 chILD EU for the study of orphan lung disease, the EU-IMI UBIOPRED project and a co-investigator on the FP-7 BESTCILIA grant.
Published work and editorial experience
Professor Bush is 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 was formerly deputy editor of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine (the only deputy outside North America), associate editor of the European Respiratory Journal and the European editor of Pediatric Pulmonology.
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 350 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 edition published, 8th edition in press) and Cystic Fibrosis (Hodder Arnold, new edition in preparation).