Professor Neil Bryan Oldridge was born in South Africa in 1941 and left in 1964 after graduating from Rhodes University. After teaching in the United Kingdom for two years, he received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA in 1972 and published the first research date on the effects of coronary artery bypass surgery on exercise tolerance. Professor Oldridge then moved to McMaster University, Ontario, Canada in 1972 and is now a Canadian citizen.
At McMaster University, Professor Oldridge was a co-investigator on one of the earliest randomized clinical trials examining the impact of cardiac rehabilitation after a recent heart attack on survival and published the first meta-analysis of the effects of cardiac rehabilitation after a heart attack in 1988 which he has recently updated as a Cochrane Collaboration systematic review. He and his colleagues developed the MacNew Health-related Quality of Life questionnaire for patients who survive a heart attack. This questionnaire has been translated into 18 languages including Chinese and is used internationally for both research and clinical purposes. Professor Oldridge returned to the University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee Clinical Campus) as Professor of Medicine in 1985 and in 1989 was appointed Professor of Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where he continued his investigations in the measurement of health-related quality of life and its use in economic evaluation. He moved to Indiana University in 1988 as Professor of Health Sciences and Medicine, Associate Director of the IU Center for Aging Research, and Scientist at the Regenstrief Institute for Health Care. He is presently Adjunct Professor of Health Sciences at Indiana University and Fellow and Clinical Professor in the College of Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Professor Oldridge is the author of three books and more than 130 scientific publications and is the senior author of the only published cost-utility analysis of cardiac rehabilitation. He has served on the National Institutes of Health Study Sections for Epidemiology and Disease Control and also Behavioral Medicine and was a member of the Expert Panel which developed the National Institutes of Health Clinical Practice Guidelines for Cardiac Rehabilitation. He is the Principal Investigator of a study sponsored by the European Society of Cardiology (Working Group on Cardiac Rehabilitation and Exercise Physiology) which is designed to develop a core health-related quality of life questionnaire for patients with coronary heart disease and is a co-Principal Investigator of a study on the effects of exercise training in heart disease patients with an implantable cardiac defibfrillator.
Professor Oldridge is a Fellow and Past President of the American College of Sports Medicine and is a Founding Fellow of the American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation. In 1994 he received the American College of Sports Medicine Citation Award and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Foundation and Graduate School Research Award and in 2002 received the Beckmann Medal for lifetime achievement in research in cardiac rehabilitation from the German Society for Prevention and Rehabilitation of Cardiovascular Disease. |