By Keith Beard, FISPE, South Glasgow University Hospitals NHS Trust, Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom

I was delighted to be asked to give the citation when Hugh Hanna Tilson was awarded the Society's first ISPE honorary lifetime Fellowship at the ICPE in Bordeaux in August.

Hugh was born in Pennsylvania and moved around the country with his family before settling in St. Louis, Missouri where he went to school. He graduated with B.A. from Reed College in Portland, Oregon and subsequently graduated with M.D. from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri in 1964. Between 1965-1968, Hugh served in the U.S. military service as Preventive Medicine Officer in Germany. By his own admission during that time some of his main achievements were that he learned to speak German, stopped smoking and lost a lot of weight! On return to the USA he attended the Harvard School of Public Health from 1968-1971 where he obtained M.P.H. and subsequently Dr.P.H.

Since that time he has followed a very varied career path and has served with distinction in all areas. He has spent significant periods in public service, academia and the pharmaceutical industry. It would be invidious to attempt to cover all or even most of his contributions and achievements. To give some idea, he has been involved with the U.S. government Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality (AHRQ) where he serves as the CERTS National Steering Committee Chair, the American College of Preventive Medicine where he was President from 1995-1997, the CDC where he served on numerous committee, working groups and task forces, CIOMS, DIA, the Institute of Medicine where he has contributed to work on health services research, preventive medicine and vaccine safety. Most recently, he has been deeply involved at the University of North Carolina where he has fulfilled diverse academic and organisational roles. These have ranged from work on bio-terrorism to his present position as Senior Advisor to the Dean.

In the pharmaceutical industry, he started as Head of Product Surveillance and Epidemiology at Burroughs Wellcome in 1981. Through mergers and promotions, at the time of retirement from Glaxo Wellcome in 1996 he occupied the position of Vice-President and World Wide Director, Epidemiology Surveillance and Policy Research.

With respect to Pharmacoepidemiology, he may have been the first to coin the word, although I think that claim is probably disputed by some other pioneers in the field! He was certainly part of the small band who started to meet in 1984 in Minneapolis, those meetings being the precursor to the official formation of ISPE in 1990. Hugh was of course, a founding member of ISPE and was founding co-President with Rudolf Bruppacher. Their famous joint Presidential address at the inaugural meeting of ISPE in Basle in 1991 was certainly one of the highlights of ISPE history. Hugh has done long and valued service as chair of the By-laws and Policies Committee. He has of course, fulfilled many other roles, notably Facilitator, Workshop Chair, Session Chair, Wrap-up Speaker etc. etc.

In 2004 Hugh was honoured by the Harvard School of Public Health when he received the 2004 Alumni Award of Merit. In many ways, that award epitomises Hugh's contribution to the field of Public Health and Pharmacoepidemiology. However, if asked to measure his own lifetime achievements, there is no doubt that he would consider his family life very near the top of the list. His dear wife Judy is a constant support through all his multiple activities and, indeed, has been a very regular attendee at ISPE conferences herself. Of his four children and nine grandchildren, he is immensely proud but never boastful.

For his achievements in Public Health, academia and the pharmaceutical industry; for his scholarship, leadership, organisational ability and commitment; simply for his wisdom, wit and unswerving friendship, I was proud, privileged and very pleased to be able to present Hugh Tilson the ISPE Lifetime Honorary Fellowship Award.

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