Dame Lesley Regan (born 8 March 1956) is a British

gynaecologist Gynaecology or gynecology (see American and British English spelling differences) is the area of medicine concerned with conditions affecting the female reproductive system. It is often paired with the field of obstetrics, which focuses on pre ...

, professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

and Honorary Consultant at

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust is an NHS trust based in London, England. It is one of the largest NHS trusts in England and together with Imperial College London forms an academic health science centre. The trust was formed in October 20 ...

at St Mary's Hospital. She was the president of the

Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) is a professional association based in London, United Kingdom. Its members, including people with and without medical degrees, work in the field of obstetrics and gynaecology, that is ...

from 2016 to 2019 – at the time she was only the second woman to ever hold this role and the first in sixty-four years. In 2020, she became the chair of Wellbeing of Women. In 2022, Dame Lesley was appointed as the Government's first ever Women's Health Ambassador for England. Professor Regan is the first woman to hold a chair on obstetrics and gynaecology in the country and for the past decades she has worked to establish the biggest miscarriage clinic in the world.

Education and training

Lesley Regan graduated from the

Royal Free Hospital The Royal Free Hospital (also known as the Royal Free) is a major teaching hospital in the Hampstead area of the London Borough of Camden. The hospital is part of the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, which also runs services at Barnet Ho ...

, London in 1980, before becoming a registrar in obstetrics and gynaecology at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge. She was awarded an MD thesis after a secondment to the Medical Research Council’s Embryo and Gamete Research Group. While at Addenbrooke's Regan was also a teaching fellow and Director of Studies in Medicine at

Girton College, Cambridge Girton College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was established in 1869 by Emily Davies and Barbara Bodichon as the first women's college at Cambridge. In 1948, it was granted full college status by the un ...

Career

After receiving her MD Regan moved from Cambridge to London to become a consultant and senior lecturer in obstetrics and gynaecology at St Mary’s Hospital, where she is now chair. She was one of the first women to hold a chair in

obstetrics and gynaecology Obstetrics and gynaecology (also spelled as obstetrics and gynecology; abbreviated as Obst and Gynae, O&G, OB-GYN and OB/GYN) is the medical specialty that encompasses the two subspecialties of obstetrics (covering pregnancy, childbirth, and ...

in the UK, the first being

Margaret Fairlie Margaret Fairlie Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, FRCOG Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, FRCSE (1891–1963) was a Scottish academic and Gynaecology, gynaecologist. Fairlie spent most of her career working at Dundee Roy ...

(1891–1963) who was appointed Professor of Obstetrics & Gynaecology at the

University of Dundee The University of Dundee is a public research university based in Dundee, Scotland. It was founded as a university college in 1881 with a donation from the prominent Baxter family of textile manufacturers. The institution was, for most of its ...

in 1940. Regan was elected the president of the

in 2016, the second woman and the first in 64 years to hold this position. In her first presidential address, she discussed the importance of a healthy lifestyle for a safe pregnancy, and the risks of

obesity Obesity is a medical condition, considered by multiple organizations to be a disease, in which excess Adipose tissue, body fat has accumulated to such an extent that it can potentially have negative effects on health. People are classifi ...

. She is also co-director of the UK’s Baby Bio Bank (BBB), a pregnancy tissue archive which aims to underpin future translational research into the major complications of pregnancy. The Baby Bio Bank was established on 1 November 2013, by two London Universities, University College London and Imperial College London, with funding by Wellbeing of Women. They collect samples from the three key members of the family: the mother, father and baby, allowing hereditary factors from both parents to be tracked. They require a sample of blood from the mother and father and a piece of term placenta which is routinely discarded. In June 2022, Professor Regan was appointed as the first Women's Health Ambassador for England to drive the implementation of England's first ever Women's health strategy. This appointment was subsequently renewed to December 2025 In March 2007, Regan featured in the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

's ''Prof Regan's Beauty Parlour''.

Publications

Regan has written several books on pregnancy and miscarriage including ''Your Pregnancy Week by Week''. Her book, ''Miscarriage: What Every Woman Needs to Know'' written in 2018, explores how one in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage. As RCOG President, Professor Regan published The Better for Women report, making a series of recommendations on how to improve the health of women and girls in the UK, launched in The House of Commons.

Honours

Regan was appointed

Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

(DBE) in the

2020 New Year Honours The 2020 New Year Honours are appointments by some of the 16 Commonwealth realms to various orders and honours to recognise and reward good works by citizens of those countries. The New Year Honours are awarded as part of the New Year celebratio ...

for services to women's healthcare. In 2021, Regan was awarded 2021 Inspiration of the Year ''

Hello Magazine ''Hello!'' (stylised in all caps) is a British weekly magazine specialising in celebrity news and human-interest stories, first published in the United Kingdom on 21 May 1988, following the format of '' ¡Hola!'', the Spanish weekly magazine. ...

'' Award, presented by

Natasha Kaplinsky Natasha Margaret Kaplinsky (born 9 September 1972)The Donor, News and information for blood donors, Winter 2009, National Blood Service, England, page 55 is an English newsreader, TV presenter and journalist, best known for her roles as a st ...

. Her collaborative approach to women's health has resulted in her receiving Honorary Fellowships of seven UK specialties and several international Colleges of Obstetrics & Gynaecology.

Personal and family

Regan lives in London, and is the mother of twin girls born in 1992 from her marriage to Professor John Summerfield, a liver specialist at St Mary's, in 1990, and so became a step-mother to two step-sons and two step-daughters

References