Dame Parveen Kumar Recognised for Services to Medicine

 The BSG offers the warmest congratulations to Dame Parveen Kumar, Emerita Professor of Medicine and Education at Queen Mary University of London, whose amazing career has been rightly recognised in The King’s Birthday Honours 2026. 

 Professor Dame Parveen Kumar has been awarded a Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire for her services to global medical education and health. 

Parveen is one of the most important and influential figures in Gastroenterology and indeed wider medical practice. She worked in the NHS for over 40 years as a consultant gastroenterologist and physician at Barts and the London Hospitals and the Homerton University Hospital. She was the President of the British Medical Association in 2006, of the Royal Society of Medicine from 2010 to 2012, of the Medical Women's Federation from 2016 to 2018 and of the Royal Medical Benevolent Fund from 2013 to 2020. She was also Vice President of the Royal College of Physicians from 2003 to 2005. In addition, she was a founding non-executive director of the National Institute of Clinical Excellence, chaired the Medicines Commission UK until 2005, and chaired the BUPA Foundation Charity for Research until 2013 until 2005, and also chaired the BUPA Foundation Charity for Research until 2013.

 As a student, Parveen found medical textbooks dull and so decided to improve them. Working with a colleague, she co-authored and co-edited the textbook “Kumar and Clark’s Clinical Medicine” (currently in its 11th Edition) which is used worldwide. This was the book that so many of us learned our general medicine from and still refer to today. Parveen She has also published and co-edited many other medical books widely influencing practice. 

 We are proud to have Parveen as a long-standing member of the BSG. The Dame Parveen Kumar Award for Education and Training recognizes outstanding, often under-recognized trainers in gastroenterology and hepatology. Professor Dame Parveen Kumar herself delivered a prestigious BSG Presidential Lecture at our annual conference in 2021 on ‘Caring for the Profession’.

 We are so delighted to see Parveen honoured in this way. She is a truly inspirational person who has influenced so many of our careers and done so much to improve the care of patients.