Anthony Costello

Anthony Costello was born on 20 February 1953 in Beckenham, England, and attended St Joseph’s Academy in Blackheath before earning a degree in Experimental Psychology at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. After completing his medical training at Middlesex Hospital he specialised in paediatrics and neonatology at University College London, where his aunt was the well‑known atheist activist Barbara Smoker. His career took a decisive turn when he lived from 1984 to 1986 in the remote Baglung district of western Nepal, a experience that sparked his lifelong commitment to improving maternal and newborn health in the world’s poorest communities. Costello’s early research focused on community mobilisation, culminating in a landmark cluster randomised trial with women’s groups in Makwanpur, Nepal, published in The Lancet in 2004. The trial demonstrated that active participation of pregnant women in locally led groups could cut maternal deaths by one‑third, a finding that was replicated in India, Bangladesh and Malawi and later incorporated into WHO guidelines. Over the next decade he authored more than a dozen high‑impact trials, co‑authored a pioneering 1999 book on newborn health in low‑resource settings, and championed cost‑effective interventions that blended scientific rigour with culturally sensitive community engagement.

From 2015 to 2018 Costello served as Director of Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health at the World Health Organization in Geneva, where he helped craft the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health (2016‑2030) and launched the Accelerated Action for the Health of Adolescents (AA‑HA!). His expertise in climate‑health links led him to chair the 2009 Lancet Commission on Managing the Health Effects of Climate Change and co‑chair a 2015 Lancet Commission that united the UK, China, Norway and Sweden in emergency climate actions. In 2015 he inaugurated the Lancet Countdown, an annual report that now tracks progress on health and climate change across 38 universities and research institutes. Costello’s contributions have been recognised with the prestigious James Spence Medal, a BMJ Lifetime Achievement Award, and fellowships of both the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. Outside the laboratory he is married to Helen Costello, with whom he has two sons and a daughter, and remains an avid supporter of Millwall F.C. His personal connections also include a cousin‑in‑law, the late Talk Talk singer Mark Hollis. Anthony Costello’s career epitomises the power of evidence‑based community action to transform global health outcomes.