Avery Award in Pediatric Surgery
National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, University of Oxford
Oxford, United Kingdom
After graduating with a distinction from Imperial College School of Medicine in 2010, Benjamin completed his house jobs in West London and was subsequently appointed as an Academic Clinical Fellow in pediatric surgery. This fellowship allowed him to combine his surgical training with work as a researcher in the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit at the University of Oxford. Benjamin’s work at the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit involved a series of studies, each of which was designed to help Doctors make more evidence-based decisions about how to treat children born with congenital anomalies, including gastroschisis. This work also provided information that could be used to give parents a better understanding of what their child was likely to experience when undergoing surgery early in life.
In 2015, Benjamin secured funding from the National Institute for Health Research to undertake a PhD, a large portion of which focused on gastroschisis. During his PhD, Benjamin worked with doctors, allied-health professionals, parents of children who were born with gastroschisis, and adults who had been treated for gastroschisis as a child, in order to identify a consensus of which factors were most important in deciding whether a child with gastroschisis had been successfully treated or not. Focusing on these factors, Benjamin used information from over 1600 children born with gastroschisis in Canada and the UK to investigate whether the type of operation a child underwent affected how successful their treatment was. The information from this study can help surgeons decide which operation is best for each child they treat for gastroschisis. Benjamin is continuing to work on a series of studies which can help develop a more evidence-based approach to treating children who undergo early surgery.
I am passionate about improving the care that children, including those with gastroschisis, receive when they require surgery early in life. I hope that over the course of my career both clinically and through my research I can help develop systems that will ensure all children receive truly evidence-based treatments.
I am honored to have received this award and thank Avery’s Angels Gastroschisis Foundation for supporting me in my research.